Tijan Sallah

Gambian economist, poet, editor, and short story writer Tijan Sallah grew up in Serrekunda and Banjul, capital of The Gambia. He earned a PhD in economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Influenced by the Négritude poets, Sallah draws on the political as well as the mystical in his work. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Harrow: London Poems of Convalescence (2014), Dream Kingdom: New and Selected Poems (2007), Kora Land (1989), and When Africa Was a Young Woman (1980). His short stories are collected in Before the New Earth: African Short Stories (1988), and he coauthored the biography Chinua Achebe: Teacher of Light (2003) with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Sallah edited the anthologies New Poets of West Africa (1995) and, with Tanure Ojaide, The New African Poetry: An Anthology (1999). In the 1980s, Sallah taught economics Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works for the World Bank.