Petina Gappah is an international lawyer and writer who was born in Kitwe, Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. She is the author of An Elegy for Easterly, The Book of Memory and Rotten Row. Her work has shortlisted for, among others, the Orwell Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN America Open Book Award and the Prix Femina (Étrangers). She is the 2009 recipient of the Guardian First Book Award and the 2016 recipient of the McKitterick Prize from the Society of Authors. Having spent more than a decade working as an international trade lawyer in Geneva, Petina now divides her time between Harare and Berlin, where she is a fellow of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm.