Namwali Serpell

1980–

Namwali Serpell is a Zambian-American writer and academic. Born in Lusaka to a British-Zambian psychology professor and a Zambian economist, she moved with her family to Baltimore at the age of nine. She studied literature at Yale and took a doctorate in English and American literature at Harvard, then taught English at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining Harvard's English faculty. She won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her story The Sack. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, a multi-generational saga of Zambia, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Timeline of Namwali Serpell’s life

Works

Prizes