Christina Ama Ata Aidoo, a distinguished Ghanaian author and educator, was born on 23 March 1942. A graduate of the University of Ghana in 1964, she was appointed research fellow of the Institute of African Affairs before studying creative writing at Stanford University in the United States. Ama Ata Aidoo, who served for several years as a Professor of English at the University of Ghana, is an accomplished novelist, short story writer and playwright. Many of her short stories have been published in Black Orpheus and Okyeame. Among her plays, Anowa, has probably been her most successful. First published in 1970, it was produced to great acclaim in the United Kingdom in 1991. It is a symbolic dramatization of a nineteenth century Ghanaian legend about a young girl who rejects her parents’ choice of a husband to marry a man of her own choosing. Aidoo’s finest short-stories appear in the collection, No Sweetness Here, published in 1969, and her best-known plays include Dilemma of a Ghost (1965). In 1977, she published a semi-autobiographical novel, Our Sister Killjoy; or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint. Her second novel, Changes, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the African Region in 1993. She also produced two collections of poems, Someone Talking to Sometime (1986) and Birds and Other Poems (1987). In addition, she wrote a children’s book, The Eagle and the Chicken in 1987. Most of Aidoo’s writing adroitly examines the clash of urban and rural cultures in modern Ghana and much of it has been reprinted in African anthologies. She moved to Zimbabwe in 1983 and worked for the Curriculum Development Unit of the Ministry of Education. She has also been a keen supporter of the Zimbabwe Women Writers Group.