Afua Hirsch

Afua Hirsch examines race, empire, culture, and identity across nonfiction, journalism, broadcasting, and film. Raised in Wimbledon with a strong connection to her family’s Ghanaian heritage, she studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, worked for the Open Society Institute in Dakar, and qualified as a barrister in England and Wales. She became the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent, later reported from West Africa, and served as social affairs editor at Sky News. Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging blends memoir with social and historical analysis and received the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. Her later book Decolonising My Body considers beauty, ritual, and inheritance. Hirsch co-presented the six-part Enslaved with Samuel L. Jackson, presented the BBC arts series Africa Rising, and founded Born in Me Productions. Her audio work on the British Empire, long-running Guardian column, and journalism teaching in Los Angeles carry the same questions into other forms.