Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She has received a Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and was selected for the Africa39. Her debut novel, THE OLD DRIFT, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; it was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times. Her second novel, THE FURROWS, was one of the New York Times 10 Best Books and 100 Notable Books of 2022. Her book of criticism, STRANGER FACES, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She’s a Professor of English at Harvard University.