Sefi Atta is a Nigerian-American author, short-story writer, playwright, and screenwriter. Her debut novel Everything Good Will Come (2005) won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
Sefi Atta was born in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. Her dad, Abdul-Aziz Atta, died when she was eight. He was the Secretary to the Federal Government and Head of the Civil Service until he died in 1972, and she was raised by her mother, Iyabo Atta.
Atta was educated in Lagos, England, and the United States. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England and a Certified Public Accountant in the United States, where she migrated in 1994. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2001.
Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review, Mississippi Review, and World Literature Today and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Atta won PEN International's 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize.
Sefi Atta is also a playwright. Her radio plays have been broadcast on the BBC, and her stage plays have been produced and published worldwide.
Her short story collection, Lawless, received the 2009 Noma Award For Publishing in Africa. Lawless came out in the US and UK as News From Home.
In 2021, a Netflix original movie, Swallow, based on Sefi Atta's second novel, co-written by Atta and Kunle Afolayan, was released.
Sefi Atta currently divides her time between the United States, England, and Nigeria.
Photo credit: www.sefiatta.com
