Writers win fewer awards than musicians, and each one tends to mean more. A literary prize usually rewards a single book after a long judging process. There is no fan vote and no category for the most popular novel of the year.
Ghana's most decorated writers fall roughly into two groups: the poets of the independence generation, honoured at home and across the Commonwealth, and the diaspora novelists winning American and British prizes today.
The most awarded Ghanaian writers and authors
1Atukwei Okai
9 wins. The poet known for performing his work aloud collected honours on three continents. Atukwei Okai became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1968, won the Ghana Book Award in 1979, the Afro-Asian Writers' Association's Lotus Prize in 1980 and Italy's C. Marconi Gold Medal in 1986. Ghana made him a Member of the Order of the Volta in 2007. Read full profile →
2Yaa Gyasi
8 wins. Yaa Gyasi collected most of her prizes for a single novel. Homegoing won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award, the American Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Granta put her on its Best of Young American Novelists list in 2017. The Vilcek Prize followed in 2020. Read full profile →
3Nii Parkes
7 wins. Nii Ayikwei Parkes has been honoured as a performer, a novelist and an essayist. He won two Farrago poetry performance awards in London, and the French translation of Tail of the Blue Bird took the Prix Laure Bataillon and the Prix Mahogany in 2014. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024. Read full profile →
4Meshack Asare
6 wins. Ghana's great children's author. Meshack Asare won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1982 for The Brassman's Secret, Austria's national prize for Cat in Search of a Friend, and in 2014 became the first African to win the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature. Read full profile →
5Kofi Awoonor
5 wins. Kofi Awoonor won the Gurrey Prize as a young poet in 1959 and the Commonwealth Poetry Award in 1989. At home, the Ghana Association of Writers and ECRAG honoured him in the early 1990s. He was killed in the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013. Read full profile →
6Ama Ata Aidoo
3 wins. Three wins across three decades and three forms. Ama Ata Aidoo won the Mbari Club Prize for a short story in 1962, the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in Africa in 1992 for her novel Changes. Read full profile →
7Elizabeth-Irene Baitie
2 wins. Elizabeth-Irene Baitie won first prize in the Burt Award for African Literature twice, for The Twelfth Heart in 2009 and The Dorm Challenge in 2012. Read full profile →
8Taiye Selasi
2 wins. Taiye Selasi was named to Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and to the Africa39 list of promising African writers in 2014. Read full profile →
A short list with a caveat
Agyedin profiles about twenty Ghanaian writers so far, so this ranking is narrower than the ones for music or politics. Some important names have very few documented prizes. Ayi Kwei Armah wrote The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, yet we could not verify a single literary award in his name. We will update this list as we add more writers and confirm more prizes.
How we counted
Every figure here is a count of wins, not nominations, taken from the award list on each person's Agyedin profile. We built those lists from official winners lists, national newspapers and Wikipedia, and dropped anything we could not trace to a source. Two rules keep the musicians comparable: a collaboration award counts for every credited artist, while a song award counts only for the lead artist. A national or foreign order counts once, and a batch of honorary degrees counts as a single entry.
Totals change as new ceremonies happen. The Awards Leaderboard updates itself from the profiles, so it will always be a step ahead of this page. If you can document a win we have missed, send it to our corrections desk.
