About
A twentieth-century Ghanaian author, she is known for her place in history as the first published African female dramatist. Also a fiction writer and poet, she received the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for her novel, Changes, and the Nelson Mandela Prize for her 1986 poetry collection, Someone Talking to Sometime.
Before Fame
She decided at age fifteen that she wanted to be a writer and accomplished this goal by attending Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast and The University of Ghana in Legon. She published her debut dramatic work, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1965.
Trivia
She was appointed Ghanaian Minister of Education in 1982 but resigned after eighteen months when she couldn't accomplish her goals.
Family Life
Her father was Chief Nana Yaw Fama, a Fante royal who influenced his daughter's writing career by founding the first school in their village of Saltpond, Ghana.
Associated With
She was born in Ghana, as was the Sixth President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.
