Aminatta Forna, OBE is a Scottish writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil that Danced on the Water, and three novels: Ancestor Stones , The Memory of Love and The Hired Man . Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting Professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University.
On 7 March 2014, Aminatta Forna was announced as the recipient of the 2014 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize .
In 2015 Forna was part of the judging panel which awarded the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award to Yiyun Li.
The finalists for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature were announced in May 2015. The list included Forna and writers, poets and playwrights from around the world. The majority of the finalists were women writers. Also in 2016, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Forna was announced as one of the 2017 panel of judges.
Forna was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to literature. Forna is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, sits on the advisory committee for the Royal Literary Fund and the Caine Prize for African Writing, has been a judge on several high-profile prize panels, including the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and continues to champion the work of up-and-coming diverse authors.
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1964
