Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani is a novelist, journalist, essayist and humorist. She was born at 5 a.m. on March 28, 1976, in Enugu, Nigeria, to Chukwuma Hope Nwaubani and Patricia Uberife Nwaubani. (Her mother named her 'Adaobi', meaning 'first daughter of the family', and 'Tricia', signifying that she was 'from Patricia'. Her father named her 'Obinne', meaning 'heart of a mother' or 'mother's desire' or 'precious to her mother').

As a teenager, she secretly dreamed of becoming a CIA or KGB agent. She studied Psychology at the University of Ibadan. Her first income was from winning a writing competition at the age of 13. In her first year at university, she was a member of the Idia Hall Chess Team, and also a member of the university's (classical music) choir.

A quote that Adaobi Tricia finds most instructive:

“The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.

Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear".

— A. W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)