AUTHOR * SPEAKER * TEACHER * FAITH ADIELE is : The author of The Nigerian-Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems (Shebooks), a witty, tricultural look at black women and fibroids, and Meeting Faith (W.W. Norton & Co.), a travel memoir about becoming Thailand’s first black Buddhist nun, which received PEN Beyond Margins Award for Best Memoir of 2004 • Co-editor of Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology (The New Press), with 24 international stories ideal for the classroom • and Writer / Narrator / Subject of the PBS documentary My Journey Home, which is based on her (Obama-esque!) life growing up with a Nordic-American single mother and then traveling to Nigeria as an adult to find her father and siblings.
Other projects include The Student Body: A Novel (Random House), a trashy, multicultural thriller co-written with 3 Harvard classmates; a signed, limited edition chapbook with a Kenyan graphic artist; and 2 middle school readers on urban Africa for Time Warner.
A popular speaker, teacher and MC, Faith has been featured in O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire’s 5 Women to Learn From, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on NPR, on the Tavis Smiley show, in a national television ad for TIAA-CREF, in the pilot for a new reality show, and in a 2-page spread: “A Day in the Life of Faith Adiele” for Pink magazine. She is the recipient of a UNESCO International Artists Bursary, the Millennium Award from Creative Nonfiction, and 16 artists’ residencies in Brazil, Canada, Italy and the USA.
Educated at Harvard University, the Nonfiction Writing Program at Iowa, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Faith has lived in West Africa and Southeast Asia, worked as a diversity trainer and community activist, and taught travel writing, memoir, and creative writing from Bali to Switzerland to Ghana. She is a member of The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and was recently appointed Associate Professor of Writing at California College of the Arts, where she is wrapping up Twins: Growing Up Nigerian * Nordic * American, an “epic memoir” that will complete the story begun in the PBS documentary.
To get a taste of what Twins (3 generations • 4 continents • 700 pages!) has in store, watch the 2:56 minute clip below or read excerpts that have appeared in Essence magazine, Transition, and numerous anthologies.
From My Journey Home, the PBS documentary film about Faith’s tricultural heritage, her parents’ interracial love affair set against the backdrop of the American Civil Rights and African Independence movements, and the obstacles surrounding her birth.
BUY the DVD (in PAL or NTSC) on Square!
faith adiele 