Aminatta Forna is an award-winning novelist, memoirist and essayist. She was born in Scotland and raised between Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom, as well as spending periods of her childhood in Iran and Thailand.

Aminatta has penned six books, including The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stone. In 2002 she published a memoir of her dissident father and Sierra Leone, The Devil that Danced on the Water. Her latest book is a collection of essays entitled The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion.

Aminatta has acted as judge for several major literary awards including the International Man Booker 2013 and the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2015. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has served on the Board of the National Theatre of Great Britain, on the Advisory Committees of the Royal Literary Fund, the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Currently Aminatta holds the position of Director of the Lannan Center at Georgetown University and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.