“I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can g...”

“I think of myself as a little kid, and I had a wild imagination, but it was something that was encouraged and supported, which helped steer me into the arts.”

“I kept hiding my smile in pictures throughout middle school and most of high school until picture day came my senior year.”

“When I was little, I didn't smile much. Don't get me wrong. I was a happy kid, but I couldn't stand the space, dead center, in between my teeth. Yeah, I could whistle through it, but so what? That ...”

“I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s.”

“Naming in my culture will tell you more about the parent of the child than the child themself and also what is being spoken onto the child. So my full name is Uzoamaka Nwanneka Aduba, but the first...”