Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell is a prolific writer of contemporary, historical fiction, and science fiction stories hailing from Zambia. She lives in America and teaches English. Serpell made her debut in the literary world with her 2015 short story called The Sack, which won her the Caine Prize in African fiction. In the 2014 Hay Festival, Serpell was included in the list called Africa39 that featured 39 top writers from Sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 40 with the talent and potential for defining trends in the African literature. Author Serpell was born in 1980 in Lusaka, Zambia as Carla Namwali Serpell. Her family still resides in her hometown in Zambia. Serpell’s father is of the British-Zambian origin and works as a psychology professor at the Zambia University, while her mother works as an economist. When Serpell was nine years old, she shifted to Baltimore, United States. She completed her early education in America by studying literature at Yale and Harvard.