31 Facts About Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry.

Aminatta Forna's first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest.

Aminatta Forna has been widely praised and received numerous awards, in addition to being nominated for others.

Aminatta Forna was the Sterling Brown '22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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

Aminatta 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.

Aminatta Forna has served as a judge on several high-profile prize panels, including the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Aminatta Forna continues to champion the work of up-and-coming diverse authors.

In March 2019, Aminatta Forna's Happiness was shortlisted for the European Literature Prize.

Aminatta Forna was born c 1965 in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, near Glasgow, the third child of her parents Mohamed Sorie Forna, a Sierra Leonean who had completed his medical training in Scotland and had a practice, and his wife Maureen Christison, who is Scottish.

Aminatta Forna's parents divorced and her mother remarried, returning to the UK.

Dr Aminatta Forna had become more deeply involved in politics and entered government after the country achieved independence in 1961, serving as finance minister and working to aid developing countries.

Aminatta Forna resigned after becoming discouraged by what he said was a growth in political violence and corruption.

Aminatta Forna was imprisoned between 1970 and 1973; Amnesty International designated him as a Prisoner of Conscience.

In 1975 Dr Aminatta Forna was executed by hanging, on charges of treason.

Dr Aminatta Forna had married again in Sierra Leone, and the children called their stepmother "Auntie Yabome".

Ten years old when her father was killed, Aminatta Forna finished school in England and studied law at University College London.

Between 1989 and 1999, Aminatta Forna worked for the BBC, both in radio and television.

Aminatta Forna worked as a reporter and made documentaries in the spheres of arts and politics.

Aminatta Forna is known for her Africa documentaries: Through African Eyes, the first of which she made at the BBC.

Aminatta Forna is a board member of the Royal National Theatre and was a judge for the Man Booker International Prize 2013.

Aminatta Forna founded The Rogbonko Village Project, a charity begun as an initiative to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone.

Aminatta Forna explores how the gradual accretion of small, seemingly insignificant acts of betrayal find expression in full-scale horror.

Aminatta Forna had returned to Sierra Leone to try to clear her father's name.

Aminatta Forna's memoir expresses her anger and sorrow about her father's arrest, imprisonment and political execution for supposed treason.

In 2007, Aminatta Forna was ranked by Vanity Fair magazine as one of Africa's best new writers.

Aminatta Forna was one of 10 writers contributing to the film 10x10 Girl Rising.

Aminatta Forna wrote about Mariama, an intelligent woman who studies engineering in university and strives to extend the opportunity of education to young girls.

The Financial Times review of Happiness said: "Aminatta Forna is a risk-taker, a writer who doesn't hold back from tackling big themes".

In December 2020, in a conversation with Maaza Mengiste published by Literary Hub, Aminatta Forna announced that her essay collection named The Window Seat would be published in May 2021.

Mother of all myths is a Novel written by Aminatta Forna, it was Released in july 1998 and published by HarperCollins.