And the Winner Is . . .

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who just last year, at 29, won the U.K.'s Orange Prize for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun (she was shortlisted for it in 2003 for Purple Hibiscus, her first novel), adds to her accolades—she was awarded a fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation, popularly known as the "genius grant." Her short fiction alone attests to this. And she's written more than a few good essays. It seems a fitting nod from one generation to the next, in this the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart and a day after Chinua Achebe was lauded for his accomplishments at George Mason with a showing of more than 1,200. (Adichie told the Washington Post last year that she's been writing ever since she read Things Fall Apart, at age 10.) And, so she took the call in Lagos and lived most of her life in Nigeria—she's been in Maryland, halfway between D.C. and Baltimore, for some time; can't we say she's D.C.?