Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

The Chevening Scholarship is an international scholarship, funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and partner organizations, that lets foreign students with leadership qualities study at universities in the United Kingdom.