Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell is a distinguished scholar and writer in the field of Literature. She holds a B.A. in English literature from Yale University (2001) and a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard University (2008), focusing on American and British fiction. Serpell joined the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008 as an assistant professor, received tenure in 2014, and served as associate professor, teaching courses on the novel since 2000, writing and technology, and Black science fiction. During 2014-2015, she held a fellowship at the Townsend Center for the Humanities for her project “Faces: Unintended Pleasures,” analyzing uncanny faces in texts such as Hannah Crafts’ The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, using psychoanalytic concepts of disavowal. Her research spans contemporary fiction, narrative theory, the aesthetics and ethics of faces, and African speculative fiction. In 2021, she joined Harvard University as Professor of English.

Serpell’s literary output includes acclaimed novels The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), a Zambian multigenerational epic that won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction (shared, 2020); and The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her essay collection Stranger Faces (Transit Books, 2020) was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for criticism. Short stories “The Sack” (Caine Prize winner, 2015, prize money shared with nominees) and “Muzungu” (selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009, 2010 Caine Prize shortlist) highlight her prowess. She received the 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Essays like “She’s Capital” (American Society of Magazine Editors Award, 2023), “River of Time” (The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021), and “Critical Navel-Gazing” (The Best American Essays 2025) underscore her critical impact. Her forthcoming On Morrison (Penguin Random House, 2026) examines Toni Morrison’s work. Serpell’s contributions have shaped discourse on identity, race, speculative genres, and narrative innovation.