Ayesha Harruna Attah | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 1983 (age 39–40) Accra, Ghana |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | Ghanaian |
| Education | Mount Holyoke College; Columbia University; New York University |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Website | |
| www | |
Ayesha Harruna Attah (born December 1983) is a Ghanaian-born fiction writer. [1] [2] She lives in Senegal. [3]
Ayesha Harruna Attah was born in Accra, Ghana, in the 1980s, under a military government, to a mother who was a journalist and father who was a graphic designer. [4] Attah has said: "My parents were my first major influences. They ran a literary magazine called Imagine, which had stories about Accra; articles on art, science, film, books; cartoons—which I especially loved. They were (and still are) my heroes. I discovered Toni Morrison when I was thirteen, and I was hooked. I devoured everything she wrote. I remember reading Paradise , and while its meaning completely evaded me then, I was left feeling like it was the most amazing book written and that one day I wanted to write a world full of strong female characters, just like Ms. Morrison had done." [5]
After growing up in Accra, she moved to Massachusetts and studied biochemistry at Mount Holyoke College, [3] [6] and then earned her master's degree in magazine journalism at the Columbia University, [7] and she received an MFA in creative writing at New York University. [8] [9]
Attah has published five novels. [9] Her debut book Harmattan Rain (2008) was written as the result of a fellowship from Per Ankh Publishers — under the mentorship of Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah — and TrustAfrica, [10] and was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa Region). [11] Her second novel Saturday's Shadows, published by World Editions [12] in 2015, [13] was nominated for the Kwani? Manuscript Project, [14] and has been published in Dutch (De Geus). [15] Her third novel is The Hundred Wells of Salaga (2019), [16] dealing with "relationships, desires and struggles in women’s lives in Ghana in the late 19th century during the scramble for Africa". [17] She has written The Deep Blue Between, a novel for young adults. Her fifth novel, the romantic comedy Zainab Takes New York, was released in April 2022. [18]
As a 2014 AIR Award laureate, Attah was a writer-in-residence at the Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil. [19] She also won a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship in 2016 for a proposed non-fiction book on the history of the kola nut. [20]
Attah was selected by Bernardine Evaristo to be mentored as a protégé, for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2023–2024. [21] [22]
Harmattan Rain, published in 2008, follows the three-generational story of a Ghanaian family, including Lizzie-Achiaa, Akua Afriyie and Sugri.
Lizzie-Achiaa was the brave matriarch of their family, who ran off looking for her lover and at the same time pursuing a nursing career. Her rebellious daughter, artist Akua Afriye, strikes out on her own as a single parent in a country rocked by successive coups, and Akua Afriye's only daughter Sugri was a lovely, smart girl who grew up too sheltered then leaves home for university in New York, where she learns that sometimes one can have too much freedom. [23]
Set in 1990s West Africa, Saturday's Shadows is about "a family that is struggling to maintain its cohesion in the midst of a tenuous political setting", of which it has been said: "Attah proves once again her proficiency as a writer. She demonstrates her dexterity as a writer with the accuracy and lucidity of her character development." [24]
Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. [25]
Through the experiences of Aminah and Wurche, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.
Twin sisters Hassana and Husseina's home is in ruins after a brutal raid. But this is not the end but the beginning of their story, one that will take them to unfamiliar cities and cultures, where they will forge new families, ward off dangers and truly begin to know themselves. As the twins pursue separate paths in Brazil and the Gold Coast of West Africa, they remain connected through shared dreams of water. But will their fates ever draw them back together? A sweeping adventure with richly evocative historical settings, The Deep Blue Between is a moving story of the bonds that can endure even the most dramatic change. [26]
Ayesha is the daughter of Alhaji Abdul Rahman Harruna Attah and Nana Yaa Agyeman. She also has a sister called Rahma. [27]
Novels
Essays
Other writing
Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Akua Sena Dansua is an experienced Ghanaian media and communications consultant, politician and governance and leadership practitioner. She was the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in Ghana and former Ambassador to Germany.
The Salaga Area was the name of a disputed territory between the colonial powers Germany and Britain in the late 19th century, around the town of Salaga in today's northeast Ghana. Between 1889 and 1899, both powers considered the territory between their colonies of Togoland (Germany) and Gold Coast (UK), which was largely identical with the Kingdom of Dagomba, as neutral.
The William Saroyan International Prize for Writing is a biennial literary award for fiction and nonfiction in the spirit of William Saroyan by emerging writers. It was established by Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation to "encourage new or emerging writers rather than recognize established literary figures;" the prize being $12,500.
Taiye Selasi is an American writer and photographer. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, she describes herself as a "local" of Accra, Berlin, New York and Rome. In 2005, Selasi published "Bye-Bye, Babar ", her seminal text on Afropolitans. Her novel, Ghana Must Go, was published by Penguin in 2013.
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
Elizabeth Akua Ohene is a Ghanaian journalist and a politician. She served as Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana under President John Kufuor. She had previously served as the Editor of the Daily Graphic, the first woman in the role.
Hilda Akua Frimpong is a Ghanaian model and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Universe Ghana in 2015 and represented Ghana at the Miss Universe 2015 pageant. After being diagnosed with scoliosis in 2012, Frimpong became a health activist and advocate on prevention and treatment of the condition. In 2021 whilst studying at the Syracuse University College of Law, she was named as the new editor-in-chief of the Syracuse Law Review, making her the first Black person to occupy the position.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a Ghanaian writer, art historian and filmmaker.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is an American-Ghanaian writer of novels, short stories and a poet. She has written for AOL, Parenting Magazine, the Village Voice, Metro and Trace Magazine. Her short story "Bush Girl" was published in the May 2008 issues of African Writing and her poem "The Whinings of a Seven Sister Cum Laude Graduate Working Board as an Assistant" was published in 2006's Growing up Girl Anthology. A cum laude graduate of Vassar College, she attended secondary school in Ghana. Her book Powder Necklace is loosely based on the experience. In 2014 she was chosen as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40, showcased in the Africa39 project and included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara. She is also a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Akua Asabea Ayisi was a feminist, former High Court Judge and the first female Ghanaian journalist. During the rise of the Ghanaian independence movement, Akua Asabea Ayisi trained as a journalist with Mabel Dove-Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah, who would later become the country's first prime minister and president.
Ruby Yayra Goka is a Ghanaian dentist and author. She has 15 books to her credit and is best known for being a multiple Burt Award for African Literature winner in Ghana.
Rose Akua Ampofo was a Ghanaian educator and gender advocate who became the first woman in Ghana to be ordained a Presbyterian minister. Between 1992 and 2002, she was the founding Director of the Presbyterian Women's Training Centre (PWTC) at Abokobi. From October 2002 until her death in March 2003, she was the Head of the Women and Gender Desk of Mission 21, formerly known as the Basel Mission in Basel, Switzerland.
The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship, also called the Morland Writing Scholarships or the MilesMorland Writing Scholarship is an annual financial scholarship awarded to four to six African writers to enable them write a fiction or non-fiction book in the English language.
Elizabeth Akua Nyarko Patterson is a Ghanaian social entrepreneur and the founder and executive director of the non-profit organization Girls Education Initiative of Ghana (GEIG).
Akua Sarpong-Ayisa is a Ghanaian entrepreneur. She founded and operates the floral company "Unique Floral" which operates across West Africa. She was listed as one of Glitz 100 Inspirational Women, WomanRising's 100 Most Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs in Ghana in 2016 and 2017.
Nana Akua Addo is a German-born Ghanaian model, actress and film producer. She was the second runner-up in Miss Malaika 2003 and winner of Miss Ghana-Germany in 2005. She has received awards including Glitz Style Awards and City People Entertainment Awards.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
