Nadifa Mohamed

Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somalia in 1981 and studied History and Politics at St. Hilda's College, Oxford University. Her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, won the Betty Trask Prize, was long-listed for the Orange Prize, and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN Open Book Award. In 2013 she was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and in 2014 as one of Africa 39's Best of Young African Novelists. Her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, was published in 2013 and won a Somerset Maugham Prize and the Prix Albert Bernard, and was long-listed for The Dylan Thomas Prize and short-listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work is translated into fourteen languages. She is a recipient of an Arts and Literary Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.