Namwali Serpell is a Zambian-American writer, professor, and public speaker. She is the author of the novel The Old Drift, which won the 2020 Arthur C. Clarke Award and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches African literature and creative writing. She is also a contributing editor for The New Yorker and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Serpell is a passionate advocate for African literature and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. She is a recipient of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction and the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.