ABOUT SEFI ATTA

Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964, and now divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. She is the author of the novels Everything Good Will Come (2005), Swallow (2010), A Bit of Difference (2013), The Bead Collector (2019), The Bad Immigrant (2022), and Good-for-Nothing Girl (2024); short-story collections News from Home (2010) and Indigene (2025); a children’s book, Drama Queen (2018); and Sefi Atta: Selected Plays (2019).

Atta’s short stories have appeared in literary journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story and World Literature Today, and her essays and articles have appeared in publications such as Time and Libération. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC and her stage plays have been published and performed internationally. In 2019, her screenplay Valid was a finalist for the American Zoetrope Screenplay Competition, and in 2021 she co-wrote a Netflix Original movie based on her novel Swallow. She has received several literary awards, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

Atta was a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and a judge for the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2015, a critical study of her novels and short stories, Writing Contemporary Nigeria: How Sefi Atta Illuminates African Culture and Tradition, was published by Cambria Press. She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Southern Mississippi in 2006, at Northwestern University in 2008, and at Jackson State University in 2024.