Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna, OBE, 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 (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), 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 2011, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

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 Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Since 2012 she has been Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Forna was among eight writers from seven countries to win the 2014 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (fiction).

Forna was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to literature.

Forna is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and sits on the advisory committee for the Royal Literary Fund and the Caine Prize for African Writing. She has served as a judge on several high-profile prize panels, including the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. She continues to champion the work of up-and-coming diverse authors.

In March 2019, Forna's Happiness was shortlisted for the European Literature Prize. In April 2019 it was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) Ondaatje Prize and for the Jhalak Prize