Todays Woman-------- Chika Unigwe, 2004 Commonwealth Prize Winner
In her website, she is described as an Afro-Belgian. Sounds strange? For those who don't know, Chika Unigwe only became a Belgian by naturalization. Born in Enugu and educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for her first degree, she is married to a Belgian, Jan Vanenhoudt, who she met in her 
third year at Nsukka.
She has since added a Masters from the KU Leuven and a PhD from Leiden University, Holland.
From her modest beginning, the writer is stamping her feet on the world stage.
Her debut novel, De Feniks, which was published in 2005 by Meulenhoff and Manteau (of Amsterdam and Antwerp), was shortlisted for the Vrouw en Kultuur debuutprijs award for the best first novel by a female writer. She was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2003. A year later, she won the BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. Still in 2004, her short story made the top 10 of the Million Writers' Award for best online fiction and, in 2005, she won the third prize in the Equiano Fiction Contest.
Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Wasafiri, Moving Worlds, Voices, and Okike.
In Turnhout, Belgium, where she lives with her husband and four children, she is gradually making a mark as a politician: she was voted in as city councillor in the October 2006 elections in the country.
Her novel, De Feniks, is about displacement and the isolation that can come with it. The novel will be out in Nigeria by the end of this year. Perhaps there are some echoes of her personal experience as a migrant to Belgium. "Migration goes hand in hand with loneliness. It is in its nature," Unigwe says. She was young, confident, and was ready to take on the world when she got married in her third year at UNN and left the country. But when she came to Belgium, a place where she could not speak a word of the language, adapting wasn't easy.
She has since added a Masters from the KU Leuven and a PhD from Leiden University, Holland.
From her modest beginning, the writer is stamping her feet on the world stage.
Her debut novel, De Feniks, which was published in 2005 by Meulenhoff and Manteau (of Amsterdam and Antwerp), was shortlisted for the Vrouw en Kultuur debuutprijs award for the best first novel by a female writer. She was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2003. A year later, she won the BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Competition award. Still in 2004, her short story made the top 10 of the Million Writers' Award for best online fiction and, in 2005, she won the third prize in the Equiano Fiction Contest.
Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Wasafiri, Moving Worlds, Voices, and Okike.
In Turnhout, Belgium, where she lives with her husband and four children, she is gradually making a mark as a politician: she was voted in as city councillor in the October 2006 elections in the country.
Her novel, De Feniks, is about displacement and the isolation that can come with it. The novel will be out in Nigeria by the end of this year. Perhaps there are some echoes of her personal experience as a migrant to Belgium. "Migration goes hand in hand with loneliness. It is in its nature," Unigwe says. She was young, confident, and was ready to take on the world when she got married in her third year at UNN and left the country. But when she came to Belgium, a place where she could not speak a word of the language, adapting wasn't easy.