ZAHRAH NESBITT-AHMED

Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed is a writer and researcher. Born and raised in Lagos, and of Nigerian and Kittitian heritage, her narrative non-fiction focuses on questions of inheritance and belonging. Her work-in-progress, runner-up for the 2025

Mo Siewcharran Prize, explores language loss and reclamation through her experience of not knowing her father's Indigenous language.

 

Her essays appear in anthologies from 3 of Cups Press, Creative Future, and Critical Muslim, and her writing has featured in African Arguments, Brittle Paper, New African Magazine, The Republic, and Selamta Magazine. In 2024 she was shortlisted for the inaugural Fern Academy Prize for essays, and in 2025 she received a Creative Future Writers' Award for creative non-fiction.

 

For over a decade she curated bookshy, a blog dedicated to African literature, and she edited the first two issues of the literary magazine REWRITEReads. She has also spent over fifteen years working in international development, including with the United Nations and the World Bank, on women's rights and social policy.