Ishmael Beah

Beah was born in the town of Mogbwemo, in Sierra Leone in 1980, where a civil war broke out in 1991 and lasted for eleven years. Orphaned by the civil war, Beah was on the run from the rebel advance before being picked up by government soldiers. He would become a child soldier for the army, and fight for two years for the government before being chosen to be rehabilitated in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. There he would get the opportunity to go to the United Nations in New York City and speak on behalf of child soldiers in Sierra Leone. Although eventually returned to his extended family, when the civil war reached Freetown in 1997, Beah fled for the neighboring country of Guinea and was flown to New York with the help of a workshop facilitator he had met at the United Nations. There, Beah finished high school and attended Oberlin College, working on A Long Way Gone while he was a student at Oberlin. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee and heads the Ishmael Beah Foundation, which benefits former child soldiers. Beah lives in New York City and has also written a novel, Radiance of Tomorrow.