Mariama Bâ

Bâ trained as a teacher at one of French West Africa's few schools open to girls, then taught for over a decade in Senegal before turning to writing in her forties, after marrying and divorcing a member of parliament and raising nine children largely on her own. She was active in Senegalese women's organizations, campaigning openly against polygamy and for girls' education at a time when few women writers spoke on those terms in print.

So Long a Letter, published in 1979, took the form of a widow's extended letter to a childhood friend, reckoning with her husband's second, much younger wife and the tradition that sanctioned it. The novel won the inaugural Noma Award for publishing in Africa and became a foundational text of African women's writing almost immediately. Bâ died of a long illness in Dakar in 1981, having completed only one further novel, published posthumously.