Lannan Symposium: Reading and Writing the Body
February 6th, 2023
Pictured left to right: Rabih Alameddine, Meghan O’Rourke, Daniel Marchalik, and Tope Folarin. In February 2023, Medical Humanities collaborated with the Lannan Center on the Lannan…
Meet Aminatta Forna, PhD
Aminatta Forna, PhD, is an award-winning transnational writer; professor of subjects that include African Literature, Transnational Literature, and Creative Writing; and Director of the Lannan Center.
Aminatta Forna is part of the second wave of African writers, who started writing in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s to make sense of the dictatorships and dawn of independence across the African continent. Being part of that movement in history turned her into a politically engaged writer, whose writing engages with the real world, the medical world, the political world, the world of human experience.
Her books include The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion, The Devil that Danced on the Water, Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones. Her articles and essays have appeared in many publications including The Yale Review, Freeman’s, Granta, Literary Hub, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Orion, The Guardian and The Observer. Her most recent updates can be found on her personal website.
Featured media, scholarship, and events
A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah
September 14th, 2022
This event, co-sponsored by the Lannan Center and the African Studies Program, featured Tanzanian novelist and Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation with Aminatta Forna.…
Racism as Distraction: Aminatta Forna Writes about Toni Morrison
June 13th, 2022
In this text she wrote for the Luminato Festival Toronto on Toni Morrison, Aminatta Forna reflects about Toni Morrison’s powerful words, that frame racism’s function as distraction.…
“Reclaiming Power Over One’s Own Story”, Aminatta Forna’s Remarks on Abdulrazak Gurnah from the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival Opening Night
May 17th, 2022
In her remarks for the opening night of the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival, Aminatta Forna recognizes what makes the work of Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah powerful and revealing.…
Double Visions: Aminatta Forna and Laila Lalami at the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival
May 14th, 2022
The second day of the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival featured Aminatta Forna in conversation with Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami. Both of these authors draw from their own lives to explore the desire for belonging in boundary-crossing experiences centered on identity, notions of place, and questions of origin. Together, they discussed how their nonfiction works document life on the edges of belonging—across cultures, countries, and eras.…
Aminatta Forna is One of Nearly 100 Authors Gathering at the PEN America Emergency World Voices Congress of Writers
May 13th, 2022
On May 10, 2022, PEN America published a press release convening the Emergency Congress of Writers in Response to the War in Ukraine and Other Global Crises, which announced the gathering of nearly 100 authors, including Aminatta Forna, at the United Nations to Weigh Free Expression and the Role of Writers Amid Upheaval, on May 13.…
Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah in Conversation with Aminatta Forna and Others at the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival
May 13th, 2022
The opening night of the 2022 PEN America: World Voices Festival celebrated the work of Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, in his first appearance in the United States after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last October. This event, which took place in New York on May 13, featured readings, performances, and a conversation with Aminatta Forna, Nadifa Mohamed, Esau Pritchett, Alsarah, and others.…
“On Suffering, Trauma, and Resilience”, The Yale Review Interviews Aminatta Forna
April 1st, 2022
In this interview, James Surowiecki, consulting editor at The Yale Review, talks with Aminatta Forna about her recently published essay “Who Owns Your Story? Transcending the Trauma Narrative”.…
The Bookseller Talks about Rift, Aminatta Forna’s New Book Project
March 31st, 2022
According to The Bookseller, William Collins made a “substantial deal” to publish Aminatta Forna’s new book project, Rift, slated for publication in 2024.…
“In Your Shoes: Reckoning with Our Past/Imagining Our Future“ Closes the 2022 Lannan Symposium “Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative”
March 23rd, 2022
This performance, which was the closing event of the 2022 Lannan Symposium, “Beyond Identity: Reimagining the American Narrative,” displayed The Lab’s award-winning In Your Shoes methodology, created and developed around the world by Derek Goldman, in which participants have deep, open conversations around a topic and then perform one another’s perspectives.…
“Where There Is No Hospital”, Aminatta Forna’s Writing about the Book that Saved Lives
March 10th, 2022
Aminatta Forna writes about how the book Where There Is No Doctor was used to save lives during the 2014 Ebola pandemic.…
“Who Owns Your Story? Transcending the Trauma Narrative”, Aminatta Forna on The Yale Review
February 28th, 2022
Aminatta Forna examines the ways in which we conflate every difficult experience with trauma, such that suffering and trauma have become interchangeable. …
Aminatta Forna in Conversation with John Freeman
November 9th, 2021
On November 9th, 2021, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring author Aminatta Forna and editor John Freeman to discuss her recently launched book, The Window Seat.…
An Evening with Acclaimed Writer Sofi Oksanen
September 21st, 2021
Virtual reading and conversation with one of the most awarded literary authors in Scandinavia, Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright , Sofi Oksanen. Moderated by Lannan Center Director, Aminatta Forna.…
Always Take Notes Podcast, Episode 115: Aminatta Forna
August 24th, 2021
Aminatta Forna speaks with the Always Take Notes hosts, Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd, about her early work at the BBC, the similarities between creative non-fiction and fiction and her decision to take up a post at Georgetown University.…
Third Culture Africans Podcast: Aminatta Forna, Changing the Narrative on Identity, Grief, and Appropriation
August 23rd, 2021
Aminatta Forna talks with Zeze Oriaikhi-Sao about about the impact words can have on people, why she thinks appropriation can cause great damage to the literary and arts world, and why the elevation of victimhood does nothing for actual progress.…
Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Morning Podcast: Aminatta Forna: Observations from the Window Seat
July 10th, 2021
Aminatta Forna talks with Radio New Zeland’s podcast “Saturday Morning”’s host, Kim Hill, about her most recent book, The Window Seat: Notes From A Life In Motion.…
“Chasing a Waking Life: On the Pains of Being an Insomniac”, Aminatta Forna on a Cultural and Personal History of Sleeplessness
June 9th, 2021
In her essay published on Literary Hub, Aminatta Forna writes about her experience of insomnia, while she explores the insights of doctors, scientists, philosophers and writes who have analyzed sleeplessness in different ways.…
CITY LIGHTS LIVE! Aminatta Forna in Conversation with Eula Biss
May 19th, 2021
Aminatta Forna in conversation with Eula Biss, discussing her new book, The Window Seat: Notes From a Life in Motion, published by Grove Press. This event was originally broadcasted via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete.…
Aminatta Forna Talked about The Window Seat with Rabih Alameddine
May 18th, 2021
On Tuesday, May 18, 2021, the Politics and Prose independent bookstore held a live event with Aminatta Forna and Rabih Alameddine around Forna’s recently launched book, The Window Seat.…
“Hame”, Orion Magazine Publishes Excerpt of Aminatta Forna’s The Window Seat
May 17th, 2021
Orion Magazine published an excerpt of “Hame”, one of the essays that make up Aminatta Forna’s most recent book, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion.…
Georgetown Now: A Conversation with Georgetown President John J. DeGioia featuring Aminatta Forna
February 26th, 2021
Conversation between Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Aminatta Forna.…
Readings and Talks featuring Valeria Luiselli
October 20th, 2020
Evening with award-winning novelist and essayist, Valeria Luiselli. This event was moderated by Lannan Center Director and author Aminatta Forna and was cosponsored by the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative.…
BBC Radio 4 – Bookclub: Aminatta Forna – The Memory of Love
September 5th, 2019
Aminatta Forna discusses her novel The Memory of Love with James Naughtie and a group of readers at the BBC Radio – 4 Bookclub podcast. The Memory of Love has as its background three decades of unrest and violence in Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna’s father’s home country and the one where she mostly grew up.…
“The Power of your Suffering Is in How You Tell your Story”, Aminatta Forna in PBS NewsHour’s My Humble Opinion
March 19th, 2018
Aminatta Forna spoke about trauma in the “In My Humble Opinion” segment of PBS NewsHour. She responds to what she considers an overuse of the word “trauma”, stressing, instead, people’s ability to shape their own narratives”.…
“Selective Empathy: Stories and the Power of Narrative”, Aminatta Forna on World Literature Today
November 6th, 2017
Aminatta Forna reflects on the power of storytelling, and how it both allows us to understand the worlds of other people, while also reflecting “entire range of views, assumptions, readings and misreadings” about those viewed as “other”.…