Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow, raised in Sierra Leone and Britain and also spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of two novels: The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water.
She has also published short stories and was shortlisted for the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award. In 2007 she was named by Vanity Fair as one of Africa's most promising new writers. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Mandarin.
She has written essays and articles for Granta, The Times, The Observer and Vogue among others and has written for television and radio.
In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone, where she now overseas a number of projects in the spheres of education, sanitation, maternal health and agriculture.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and sits on the Board of the National Theatre of Great Britain, on the General Committee of the Royal Literary Fund and the Council of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She has acted as judge for a number of literary awards and is currently a judge for the 2013 International Man Booker Prize.
She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and has often acted as a visiting lecturer and tutor of literature and creative writing, most recently as 2011 Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting Professor at Williams College, Massachusetts.