Lizzy Attree

Dr. Lizzy Attree is the co-founder of the Safal Kiswahili Prize for African Literature. She has a PhD from SOAS, University of London. Blood on the Page, her collection of interviews with the first African writers to write about HIV and AIDS from Zimbabwe and South Africa, was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2010. She was a Director on the board of Short Story Day Africa (2018-2024) and was the Director of the Caine Prize from 2014 to 2018.

She currently teaches Narratives of Change, Global/World Literatures and Contemporary London Literature at Richmond American University in London (2018 - date) as well offering courses at the City Lit (2025 - date) where she will also teach Contemporary African Literatures. She has taught African Literature (Anglo & Francophone) at Kings College, London (2015) and at Goldsmiths College, taught Contemporary African Migration in Literature & Film (2019).

In 2018 she completed an Arts Council-funded project on African footballers at Chelsea FC and Arsenal FC and co-published the associated anthology of poems Thinking Outside the Penalty Box with Nick Makoha and the Poetry Society. This project includes video interviews with Eniola Aluko, free to download and view online.

Dr Attree was an honorary Research Associate in the Dept of Literary Studies in English, at Rhodes University, South Africa until 2020, as well as a writer in residence, and completed her post-doc at the CHR, University of the Western Cape (2008-9).