Ellen Banda-Aaku was born in the UK and raised in Africa. She won the 2004 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa for her children’s book, Wadi’s Little Voice. In 2007, she was awarded the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story, ‘Sozi’s Box’. She also won the Penguin Prize for African Writing in 2010 and was nominated for the Commonwealth Book Prize in 2012.