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Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964, to a family of five children. Her father Abdul-Aziz Atta was the Secretary to Federal Government and Head of the Civil Service until his untimely death in 1972, and she was raised by her mother Iyabo Atta.

She attended Queen’s College in Lagos and Millfield School in England. In 1985, she graduated from Birmingham University and trained as a chartered accountant. She moved from England to the United States in 1994 with her husband, Gboyega Ransome-Kuti, a medical doctor. They have one daughter.

Sefi began to write while working as a CPA in New York, and in 2001, she graduated from the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review and Mississippi Review, and her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. Her debut novel entitled Everything Good Will Come was published in the United States, England and West Africa in 2005.

In 2005 Sefi Atta won the International PEN David T.K.Wong Prize for Short Fiction for Twilight Trek. The award was judged by David Lodge (Chair), Caryl Phillips & Eva Hoffman and is accompanied by a prize of £7,500. Atta is on the jury for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Her most recent release, a collection of short stories titled News from Home, was favorably reviewed by Chidelia Edochie, Nonfiction Editor of the acclaimed literary journal Sycamore Review. Chidelia Edochie also conducted an interview with Sefi Atta on the craft of writing.

Sefi Atta currently lives in Meridian, Mississippi with her husband and daughter and teaches at Mississippi State University. She also spent a quarter as a visiting writer-in-residence at Northwestern University.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sefi Atta", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0