VS Naipaul, Nobel Prize and Booker Prize-winning novelist and nonfiction writer, passed on days ago at 85 years of age. As is the norm, countless think pieces have appeared on his life. While Naipaul’s genius talent and his standing as a literary great aren’t in doubt, it is his legacy that stutters. Born in Trinidad […]
Tag Archives: aminatta forna
Five Beautiful Acts of Generosity by African Writers
In the midst of the pressure to deliver under that heavy tag “African Writer,” in the back and forth between critics and between writers and between critics and writers, in the midst of big novels and million-dollar book deals and accumulating prizes, it is easy to lose sight of community and what it means to […]
What Chimamanda Adichie, Taiye Selasi, Aminatta Forna and Kayo Chingonyi Are Reading This Summer
What do your favourite writers read during summer? Last year, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie read Isabel Wilkerson’s 2010 historical migration study The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration; and Imbolo Mbue read Jennifer Makumbi’s modern classic Kintu, alongside Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing; Naoki Higashida’s memoir of living with severe autism, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8; […]
Aminatta Forna’s Novel, “Happiness,” Is Out, and She Is on the Cover of Kirkus Reviews
Last November, we brought news of Aminatta Forna’s fifth book and fourth novel, Happiness. The book is now out, and after the first reviews, Forna is on the cover of Kirkus Reviews, the literary world’s leading magazine for book reviews. We are not in the least surprised as Forna is one of the most critically acclaimed fiction […]
Margaret Busby-Edited Anthology to Feature 200 Female Writers Including Adichie, Aminatta Forna, Bernadine Evaristo, Imbolo Mbue, Warsan Shire, Zadie Smith
Britain’s first black female publisher Margaret Busby will edit a new anthology that would feature 200 female African writers across generations. Titled New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of 20th- and 21st-Century Writing by Women of African Descent, it will be a sequel to Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by […]
Photos | The Rogbonko Project: Inside Aminatta Forna’s Inspiring, 15-Year Philanthropy
When literary people think of “building community,” they do it in expected ways—founding workshops, founding publishing houses, founding magazines and journals, building mentorship networks. But when Aminatta Forna first thought of it, it was something unconventional. December 2017 makes the 15th year of the philanthropic initiative Forna started: The Rogbonko Project. Shortly after her critically-acclaimed first […]
I hold a doctorate in English from Duke University and recently joined the Marquette University English faculty as an Assistant Professor. I love teaching African fiction and contemporary British novels. Brittle Paper is the virtual space/station where I play and experiment with ideas on how to reinvent African fiction and literary culture.
