Yaa Gyasi author page

Yaa Gyasi biography

Yaa Gyasi is a novelist who was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She studied English at Stanford University, earning a BA, and completed an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship.

Her debut novel, Homegoing, was published by Knopf on 7 June 2016. The novel begins with two Ghanaian half-sisters in the 1760s and follows two family lines across Ghana and America. Homegoing received the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize in 2016 and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel in 2017.

In 2016, Gyasi was named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honourees for Homegoing, selected by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Homegoing was also a finalist for the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, shortlisted for the 2018 British Book Award for Book of the Year, and longlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, was published by Knopf on 1 September 2020. The novel centres on Gifty, a neuroscience doctoral student at Stanford School of Medicine, and addresses addiction, depression, faith, science and family loss. Transcendent Kingdom was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.