Woman Crush Wednesday: Ellen Banda-Aaku

 Ellen Banda-Aaku: Ellen Banda-Aaku was born in Woking Surrey in 1965. The middle child of three she grew up in Zambia and has lived and worked in Ghana, South Africa, the UK and Zambia.

 In 2004 she won the Macmillan Writers’ Prize for Africa for Wandi’s Little Voice, a book for children. 

In 2007, her short story, Sozi’s Box, was the overall winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. 

Her novel “Patchwork,” published 2011, won the Penguin Prize for African Writing. She has a BA in Public Administration from the University of Zambia, an MA in Financial Management with Social Policy from Middlesex University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. 

Ellen Banda-Aaku is our Woman Crush Wednesday for writing stories that touch on pertinent daily issues, which deals with stigma, class, family dynamics, mental health and the negative consequences of insecurity.