You must have listened to Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted Talk titled danger of a single story which she gave back in July 2009. She encouraged Nigerians and Africans to tell their stories or else others (foreigners) will tell our stories from their own perspective.
We want to tell you a bit about fantasy writer, Nnedi Okorafor. Nnedi Okorafor has been breaking the glass ceiling but she is not bursting headlines.
Recently, the television network, Home Box Office (HBO), that aired the well-received Game of Thrones, finalised the deal for the tv adaptation of Okorafor’s sci-fi novel ‘Who Fears Death‘.
My novel WHO FEARS DEATH has been optioned by @HBO & is now in early development as a TV series with George RR Martin as executive producer. pic.twitter.com/POF7Dj2hWP
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD (@Nnedi) July 10, 2017
The new film will have Game of Thrones author, George R. R. Martin, former HBO president, Michael Lombardo, and Angela Mancuso as executive producers.
HBO had agreed with Martin to produce the series back in July.
Following the report, Martin took to Russian blogging platform LiveJournal to share details on how they selected screenwriter Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, who will also be co-executive producer, to write the pilot:
“It was not an easy selection. We considered dozens of terrific writers, finally winnowed it down to half a dozen strong finalists, and interviewed each of them at length. I was not able to be in LA for the interviews myself, though I took part by phone… but executive producers Michael Lombardo and Angela Mancuso, our development executives from HBO, and of course Nnedi Okorafor were all in the room for every interview. All of us loved what Selwyn had to say about WHO FEARS DEATH, and how he would like to bring it to the screen. It’s a powerful book, but not an easy adaptation by any means… but we think we’ve found the right writer for the assignment.”
Okorafor, who will be a consultant on the show published Who Fears Death, published in 2010 by DAW, an imprint of Penguin Books, received the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 2010 Carl Brandon Kindred Award “for an outstanding work of speculative fiction dealing with race and ethnicity.
Just two or three days ago, Nnedi Okorafor was commissioned by Marvel to write a new bi-weekly storyline for Black Panther ahead of next year’s movie.
I'll be writing a 3-issue (so far) storyline of Black Panther for @Marvel. Here's the cover of Issue 1. pic.twitter.com/oaLAK7Q0fY
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD (@Nnedi) October 4, 2017
My new gig: Black Panther – Long Live The King. Written by @Nnedi and colored by @ChrisOHalloran, out in December. #BlackPanther pic.twitter.com/RSX6yyngQf
— André Lima Araújo 🇵🇹 (@erdna11) October 4, 2017
Okorafor follows Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates as a Black Panther writer. An associate professor of creative writing at the University of Buffalo, she has won a number of awards — amongst them, the Nebula Award for Best Novella and the Hugo Award for the same — for her prose, which spans books for children, young adult and adult audiences.
Congratulations Nnedi.
