17 Facts About Afua Hirsch

Afua Hirsch FRSL was born on 1981 and is a British writer and broadcaster.

Afua Hirsch has worked as a journalist for The Guardian newspaper, and was the Social Affairs and Education Editor for Sky News from 2014 until 2017.

Afua Hirsch is the author of the 2018 book Brit: On Race, Identity and Belonging, receiving a Jerwood Award while writing it.

Afua Hirsch was born in Stavanger, Norway, to a British father and a Ghanaian mother, and was raised in Wimbledon, southwest London.

Afua Hirsch was educated at the private Wimbledon High School, and then studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St Peter's College, Oxford.

Afua Hirsch has lived in Britain and Senegal, and served as The Guardians West Africa correspondent, based in Accra, Ghana.

Afua Hirsch was awarded a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction while writing it in 2016.

Afua Hirsch has been a panellist on the Sky News discussion programme The Pledge.

In 2020, Afua Hirsch presented the documentary series African Renaissance: When Art Meets Power on BBC Four.

Afua Hirsch visited Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya, meeting musicians and artists, and recounting the history of each country.

In June 2023, Hirsch presented the three-part BBC documentary series Africa Rising with Afua Hirsch exploring how young creatives are reinventing culture across Africa.

Afua Hirsch holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Afua Hirsch was on the panel of judges for the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction that, causing much controversy, made Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo joint winners.

Afua Hirsch was cited as one of the top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2020.

In 2024, Afua Hirsch was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Afua Hirsch met Sam, her partner, while each was pursuing a legal career.

Afua Hirsch is from Tottenham, North London, and of Ghanaian descent.