Aminatta Forna Biography

Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow and raised in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. She is the author of The Memory of Love, Ancestor Stones, The Devil that Danced on the Water, and The Memory of Love, which has been selected as one of the Best Books of the Year by the Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and Times.

In 2002 Forna helped to build a primary school in her family's village of Rogbonko. The building of the school was the first step in what would become known as the Rogbonko Project: a community effort to create an escape route from poverty through multiple initiatives in the spheres of education, agriculture, infrastructure and health.

Forna is a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund and sits on the advisory committee of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She has also published essays and articles, and written for television and radio. Her television credits include the arts documentary Through African Eyes (BBC), the documentary series Africa Unmasked (Channel 4) and in 2009, The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu (BBC). Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Sunday Times, The Observer and Vogue Magazine among others. She lives in London.

She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She has been named a finalist for the 2016 Neustadt Award. Both prizes are awarded for an author's body of work.

Aminatta Forna as made OBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours 2017.

Aminatta Forna's website

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