A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Selection
Academic Year: 
2015
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah, born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel both published by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

His Memoir has been published in over 40 languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time Magazine named the book as one of the Top 10 Nonfiction books of 2007, ranking at number 3. His novel written with the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable is a powerful book about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times. Already available in several foreign languages, the New York Times finds in his writing an “allegorical richness” and a “remarkable humanity to his [Beah’s] characters”.

His work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Time magazine, International Herald Tribune, Globe & Mail, Rutgers University Press, Vespertine Press, LIT, The Guardian, Parabola magazines and numerous academic journals.

He is based in Nouakchott, Mauritania with his wife and child.

About the Author
Ishmael Beah

Ishmael Beah, born in 1980 in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book has been published in over thirty languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in 2007. Time magazine named the book as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2007, ranking it at number three. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vespertine Press, LIT, Parabola, and numerous academic journals.

Beah is a UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Advisory Committee; an advisory board member at the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; visiting scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University; visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights at Rutgers University; cofounder of the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); and president of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many panels on the effects of war on children.

He is a graduate of Oberlin College with a B.A. in Political Science and resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Supplemental Materials
Events

Thursday, September 3, 2015

  • 10:00 a.m. - Convocation will feature a talk by Ishmael Beah in Holmes Convocation Center.
  • 2:00 p.m. - Q&A Panel Discussion with faculty, staff, and students in the Blue Ridge Ballroom in the Plemmons Student Union
  • 7:30 p.m. - Reading and Book Signing in the Blue Ridge Ballroom in the Plemmons Student, sponsored by the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series