Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, Egypt, grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, in her mid-twenties. Nominated three times for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, she is the author of the novels Bird Summons, The Translator, Minaret, The Kindness of Enemies, and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner at the Scottish Book Awards. Her short story collections include Coloured Lights and Elsewhere Home, which won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. River Spirit is her sixth novel and eighth book of fiction.