Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa

Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (13 January 1931 – 16 October 1993), known as the mother of modern African Literature, was a Nigerian author and the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain. She achieved international recognition with her first novel, Efuru, published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books. Nwapa was best known for recreating life and traditions from an Igbo woman's viewpoint and published African literature and promoted women in African society. She founded Tana Press in Nigeria in 1970 and engaged in governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War, particularly working with orphans and refugees.

Nwapa's first English-language novel, Efuru, was published in 1966 at the age of 30 and is considered a pioneering work by an African woman writer. She followed this with novels like Idu, Never Again, One is Enough, and Women are Different. Nwapa also published two collections of stories and a volume of poems. In 1974, she founded Tana Press and the Flora Nwapa Company, publishing her own adult and children's literature and works by other writers. She gave as one of her objectives: "to inform and educate women all over the world, especially Feminists (both with capital F and small f) about the role of women in Nigeria, their economic independence, their relationship with their husbands and children, their traditional beliefs and their status in the community as a whole".

Flora Nwapa is the subject of a documentary entitled The House of Nwapa, made by Onyeka Nwelue that premiered in August 2016. On 13 January 2017, Nwapa's birthday was marked with a Google Doodle.

Flora Nwapa's son, Uzoma Gogo Nwakuche, founded the Flora Nwapa Foundation, a California non-profit corporation in 1994 following the death of his mother in 1993. The Flora Nwapa Foundation celebrated Efuru@50 in 2016.