On May 19th, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will address members of the undergraduate class of 2019 at Yale University as this year’s Class Day Speaker.

Class Day, which takes place annually one day before Yale’s university-wide commencement exercises, is a Yale College tradition which includes the awarding of academic, artistic, and athletic prizes, student reflections on the undergraduate experience, and an address by a notable speaker.

The event will mark a return to Yale’s campus for Ms. Adichie, who received a Master of Arts degree in African Studies from the university in 2008.

Over the past few months, we have been made aware of individuals posing as representatives of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie via Twitter and trying to extort people by email under the pretext of negotiating speaking fees for Ms. Adichie.

As a result, an official Twitter account has been set up for Ms. Adichie. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s official Twitter handle is @ChimamandaReal. Any other account claiming to be associated with Ms. Adichie is not legitimate.

The only legitimate email contact information for Ms. Adichie’s representatives is listed on her website: https://www.chimamanda.com/contact/

Chimamanda Adichie has been selected by global humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger to receive the 2018 Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award. She will accept the award at the organization’s 19th annual gala, which takes place in New York City on October 30th.

According to Action Against Hunger, “Chimamanda Adichie was selected to accept the 2018 Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award because we are inspired by her unwavering support of women and refugees. As a transformational storyteller who brings diversity, complexity, and humanity to all her professional projects, ranging from best-selling books to TED talks, her work aligns perfectly with Action Against Hunger’s mission and vision.”

The Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award is presented to individuals who embody the organization’s mission and values and also identify professionally or personally with one or more of the forty-five countries served by Action Against Hunger. Past recipients of the award include Anderson Cooper, Ertharin Cousin, the late President Nelson Mandela, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named the winner of the 2019 Everett M. Rogers Award. The award, named in honor of the late USC Annenberg professor Everett M. Rogers, is presented each year by the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California (USC) on behalf of the university’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Ms. Adichie, who is being honored for “reframing the discourse on race, gender and identity”, will accept the award and speak at the USC Annenberg School in February 2019.

On July 27th, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will receive an Honorary Doctor of Literature (DLit) degree during the July 2018 graduation ceremonies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

The other awardees are actor/social activist Forest Whitaker, author Dr Jung Chang, film curator June Givanni, and lawyer/human rights activist Vrinda Grover.

English PEN has named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the winner of the 2018 PEN Pinter Prize.

The prize, named in honor of playwright and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, is given annually to a writer of “outstanding literary merit from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.” Each winner shares the prize with an international Writer of Courage who is active in the defense of freedom of expression, often at great risk to his/her own safety and liberty.

Ms. Adichie will accept the award during a ceremony at the British Library on October 9, 2018. The 2018 Writer of Courage will also be announced on this date.

On Sunday, May 20th, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will receive an honorary degree from Amherst College during its 197th Commencement exercises, alongside five other individuals:

-Classicist and political theorist Danielle Allen
-Civil rights activist Morris Dees
-Environmental security advocate Sherri Goodman
-Art historian and curator Kellie Jones
-Children’s health advocate Philip J. Landrigan

On May 26th, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will receive an honorary degree from Bowdoin College alongside chemist and Nobel laureate Thomas R. Cech and former diplomat and government official Susan E. Rice.

On Sunday, May 13, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will receive an honorary degree from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Ms. Adichie’s visit to Duke University in 2018 will be particularly special, as her 2013 book Americanah was selected as the pre-matriculation summer reading assignment for this year’s graduating class. She visited Duke in September 2014 to discuss her book with the members of the Class of 2018, who were then first-year students.

Ms. Adichie will be one of six honorees at the 2018 commencement ceremony.