Ishmael Beah
Author and human rights activist
Ishmael Beah is a writer and human rights campaigner from Sierra Leone, and a former child soldier. His memoir A Long Way Gone tells of that experience.
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Born 1980 in Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone
About Ishmael Beah
Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998, attended the United Nations International School in New York for his last two years of secondary school, and earned a political science degree from Oberlin College in 2004. He is a bestselling author whose books have been published in more than 40 languages. After A Long Way Gone, he wrote two novels: Radiance of Tomorrow (2014) and Little Family (2020). Beah is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) and a member of a Human Rights Watch advisory committee on children's rights. He has spoken about children affected by war at the United Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations.