Today in The Baltimore Sun, read a profile of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian-born author who last year won a MacArthur "genius" grant. (You can get an even closer look at Adichie, who now lives in Columbia, on Monday when she reads from her new short-story collection, “The Thing Around Your Neck” at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.) Here's an excerpt from Mary McCauley's story, which describes Adichie's "contradictory mix of self-doubt and a self-assurance that borders on audacity":

Though she grew up in an egalitarian household, the outside world could be limiting. Maleness was explicitly prized in Nigeria, as was Western civilization.

“I started writing stories at about age 6 that were just like the books we read in school,” she says, “about children with blue eyes and poodles who played in the snow. My mother kept all my stories and occasionally threatens to give them to local journalists if I don’t do what she wants.”

Though Adichie can be critical of her adopted country — “The Thing Around Your Neck” contains pointed observations about the U.S. — she has “an immense affection” for her second home.

“It is the only Western country that makes an effort to address its past,” she says. “And, I have space here. If I’d gone to school in Britain, I wouldn’t have developed the sense of possibility I acquired here.”