Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2002 he published his first novel, Waiting for an Angel. His writing has won many prizes including the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2005/2006 he became the Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College, NY. In 2006 he co-edited the British Council anthology New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in 2007. His third novel, Oil on Water, which deals with environmental pollution in the oil-rich Nigerian Delta, was published in the US in 2011. His anthology The Granta Book of the African Short Story came out September 2011. Habila studied at the University of Jos and at the University of East Anglia where he was a Chevening Scholar and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Washington D.C. 

January 1st, 1967 in Kaltungo (Age 57)