Chika Unigue wins Nigeria $100,000 Prize for Literature

Belgium based Nigeria Chika Unigwe, author of “On Black Sister’s Street” has emerged winner of this year’s NLNG Nigeria $100,000 Prize for Literature

Chika Unigue's ‘On Black Sister’s Street’ made the final shortlist of three. The other two entries were ‘Only a Canvas‘ by Olusola Olugbesan and ‘Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter‘ by Ngozi Achebe.
The prize was awarded by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Limited to promote and encourage authorship and the development of Nigerian literary culture.
Unigwe is the first Nigerian author based outside Nigeria to win the coveted prize which started in 2004.
Unigwe was born in Enugu in 1974. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
Her first novel, ‘De Feniks’, was published in Dutch by Meulenhoff / Manteau in September 2005 while her second, ‘On Black Sisters’ Street’ was published in 2009. Her latest novel, ‘Night Dancer’ was published in Dutch in 2011 as ‘Nachtdanser’ and in English this year by Jonathan Cape, London.
In 2004, she won the BBC Short story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award and her short story made the top 10 of the Million Writers Award for best online fiction.