Professor Karen King-Aribisala was educated in Guyana, Barbados, England, Nigeria, Wales and Italy. She is a professor of English in the Department of English, University of Lagos. She is a writer of fiction and has published several short stories and poems in journals such as Wasafiri, Presence Africaine, Moving Worlds and The Griot; her work has been anthologized.

She is the recipient of several local and international awards, grants fellowships and Artists Residencies, among them a James Mitchener Fellowship and Scholarship; British Council Awards; Ford Foundation Grant; Residencies at The MacDowell Colony, USA; The Camargo Foundation, France; The Djerassi Foundation, USA; Yaddo, USA; she represented Nigeria at ROMAPOESIA, in Italy as a poet; and in India at a Women’s Writing Seminar.

She is the author of novels, among them The Hangman’s Game and Kicking Tongues; short story collections: Our Wife and Other Stories; and poems. She is the winner of the  Commonwealth Prize for Literature: Best First Book (African Region 1990/91); winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Literature: Best Book(African Region 2008); long listed for the IMPAC Literary Dublin Prize and shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature.