Aminatta forna author biography
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Aminatta FOrna
Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain and spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir, The Devil that Danced on the Water. Her latest book, an essay collection, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion, was published in
The recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, Aminatta has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award and been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize for Literature (widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel), the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction and the IMPAC Award. She is also winner of a Hurston Wright Legacy Award, the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. Aminatta is a past recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. Her latest nove
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Forna, Aminatta
PERSONAL:
Born , in Glasgow, Scotland; daughter of Mohammed (a physician and politician) and Maureen Forna; married Simon Wescott (a furniture designer). Education: University College, University of London, L.L.B. (with honors), Hobbies and other interests: Charitable work in Sierra Leone.
ADDRESSES:
Home—London, England, and Sierra Leone. Agent—David Godwin Associates, 55 Monmouth St., London WC2H 9DG, England.
CAREER:
Writer. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television, journalist, ; director of television documentaries, including Africa Unmasked, Founder of an educational trust and owner of a cashew plantation in Sierra Leone.
AWARDS, HONORS:
Harkness Fellowship, University of California at Berkeley, ; Twenty-first Century Trust Scholarship, ; Book of the Week, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio, and Discover Great New Writers selection, Barnes & Noble, both for The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest.
WRIT
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Aminatta Forna
Scottish writer (born )
Aminatta FornaOBE is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest ().[1][2] Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (),[3]The Memory of Love (),[4]The Hired Man ()[5][6] and Happiness (). In she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (), which was a new genre for her.
She has been widely praised and received numerous awards, in addition to being nominated for others. Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in ,[7][8] and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.[9]
Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She was the Sterling Brown ’22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College in Williams