Okwudili Nebeolisa was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, and currently lives in Iowa City. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop where he was a Provost Fellow and won the Prairie Lights John Leggetts Prize for Fiction. He has received support for his poetry from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Granum Foundation. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Image, Salamander Magazine, Sewanee Review, and Threepenny Review, and his nonfiction has appeared in Catapult and Commonwealth Writers.