Namwali Serpell

Born in Lusaka, Zambia, Namwali Serpell is the author of two novels: The Old Drift (2019), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, and the LA Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; and The Furrows (2022), named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The New Yorker, Time, and many other publications. She is a tenured full Professor of English at Harvard University and has published two books of criticism: Seven Modes of Uncertainty (2014) and Stranger Faces (2020), which was long listed for a Believer Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Her many honors include a Windham-Campbell Prize and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.