F.A.Q.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She is a Professor of English at Harvard University.

Her first novel, The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction “that confronts racism and explores diversity,” the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (with Yiyun Li). It was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2019, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year, and a book of the year at The Atlantic, NPR, and BuzzFeed.

Her second novel, The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. It was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2022, and was one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year.

Her book of essays, Stranger Faces (Transit Books, 2020), was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Her essay, “River of Time,” was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021. Her essay, “She’s Capital,” won the 2023 American Society of Magazine Editor’s Award for Reviews and Criticism.

Her first published short story, “Muzungu” (Callaloo) was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and short listed for the 2010 Caine Prize. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for her story, “The Sack.”