Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna (born 1964) is a Sierra Leonean-British author and essayist whose fiction and memoir explore the aftermath of conflict, trauma, and memory in West Africa and beyond. Born in Scotland to a Scottish mother and Sierra Leonean father — the prominent reformist politician Mohamed Forna, who was executed by the Sierra Leone government in 1975 — she was raised across Britain, Sierra Leone, Iran, and Thailand. Her memoir *The Devil That Danced on the Water* (2002) documents her adult search for the truth of her father's death and execution. Her novels — *Ancestor Stones* (2006), *The Memory of Love* (2010), and *The Hired Man* (2013) — examine how communities process and survive political violence. She has taught at Georgetown University and Columbia University, and was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize in 2017. Her essay collection *The Window Seat* (2021) received wide praise. Aminatta Forna lived b. 1964.