Author: Ellen Banda-Aaku

Ellen Banda-Aaku is a UK-born Zambian novelist, children’s writer, and screenwriter. Her works have been published in Australia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, the US and Zambia. Her debut novel Patchwork won the Penguin Prize for African Writing; it was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and has been translated into German and French. She was the overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2007 and won the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa in 2003. Ellen, who is based between Zambia and the UK, has, over the years, facilitated creative writing workshops in Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, and Zambia. She has judged numerous literary prizes such as The Malawi Peer Gynt National Novel Writing Competition, the Kalemba Short Story Prize in Zambia, and the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. More recently, she has created and written two TV drama series and produced a TV comedy series for the Southern African DSTV channel, Zambezi Magic.