Ayesha Harruna Attah

Ayesha Harruna Attah's parents ran a literary magazine in Accra called Imagine, and at 13 she discovered Toni Morrison and decided she wanted to write a world full of strong women. Her first novel, Harmattan Rain (2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Education

She was born in Accra in December 1983 to a journalist mother and a graphic designer father. She studied biochemistry at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, magazine journalism at Columbia and creative writing (MFA) at New York University. She lives in Senegal.

Novels

Harmattan Rain grew out of a fellowship with Per Ankh Publishers, under the mentorship of Ayi Kwei Armah, and follows three generations of a Ghanaian family. Saturday's Shadows (2015) was later translated into Dutch. The Hundred Wells of Salaga (2019) follows two women in late 19th-century Ghana during the scramble for Africa. She has also written The Deep Blue Between for young adults and the romantic comedy Zainab Takes New York (2022). She was a writer in residence in Bahia, Brazil, in 2014, won a Miles Morland scholarship in 2016 for a book on the kola nut and was mentored by Bernardine Evaristo through the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative in 2023-24.