Ayesha Harruna Attah is the author of five books: Harmattan Rain which was nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Saturday’s Shadows which was shortlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript Project, The Hundred Wells Of Salaga which was a finalist for the 2020 William Saroyan Prize, The Deep Blue Between, and Zainab Takes New York.

Educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and NYU, Ayesha has degrees in biochemistry, journalism, and creative writing. A 2015 Africa Centre Artists in Residency Award Laureate and Sacatar Fellow, she is the recipient of the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction. She is the 2023-2024 Literature Protégée for the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative and is being mentored by Bernardine Evaristo. 

Ayesha’s work focuses on remembering what has been forgotten, often using cultural memory and historical research to drive her narratives, an aspect of her storytelling that was highlighted in December, 2025 when she became Doek! Literary Magazine’s fourteenth Literatea interviewee with “That Sweet Faraway Place Where Dreams Are Made.”

She currently lives in Senegal and loves books, long walks, green tea ice cream, and staring at the ocean. She runs a small ice-cream shop in the village of Popenguine.

More from and about Ayesha Harruna Attah: “Incident On The Way To Bakoy Market” (Asymptote) • “Inside Ghana: A Tale Of Love, Loss, And Slavery” (Newsweek) • “Khaya Tree” (Storytime) • “Tamale Blues” (Storytime) • “Slow-Cooking History” (The New York Times) • “The Intruder” (The New York Times)

Author image: Dirk Skiba