| Leila Aboulela | |
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Leila Abouela in 2010 |
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| Born | 1964 Khartoum Sudan |
Leila Aboulela (born 1964), Arabic 'ليلى ابوالعلا' is a Sudanese writer and playwright. She writes in English.
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Born in 1964 Cairo, Egypt, Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, where she attended the Khartoum American School and Sister School. She graduated from Khartoum University in 1985 with a degree in Economics and was awarded an MSc and an MPhil degree in Statistics from the London School of Economics.
Aboulela also lived for many years in Aberdeen, where she started to write while looking after her family. She currently (2010) lives in Doha.
She was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story The Museum included in her collection of short stories Coloured Lights. Her novel The Translator was nominated for the Orange Prize and was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times in 2006. Her second novel Minaret was nominated for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Her latest novel Lyrics Alley is set in the Sudan of the 1950s and was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2011.[1] Lyrics Alley was the Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards [2] and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize -Europe and S.E Asia.