Serpell received her B.A. from Yale in 2001 and her PhD from Harvard in 2008. She got tenure for her scholarship from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 and she became a full professor at Harvard in 2020.

F.A.Q.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She is a fiction writer, a literary critic, and a professor of English at Harvard University.

Her first novel, The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction “that confronts racism and explores diversity,” the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (with Yiyun Li). It was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2019, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year, and a book of the year at The Atlantic, NPR, and BuzzFeed.

Her second novel, The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. It was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2022.

Her book of essays, Stranger Faces (Transit Books, 2020), was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Her essay, “River of Time,” was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021. Her essay, “She’s Capital,” won the 2023 American Society of Magazine Editor’s Award for Reviews and Criticism. Her essay, “Critical Navel-Gazing,” was selected for The Best American Essays 2025. Her book of essays, On Morrison, is forthcoming January 27, 2026 (pre-order here).

Her first published short story, “Muzungu” (Callaloo) was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African fiction. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for her story, “The Sack.”