Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a Trinidadian writer. Her debut novel, When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton), won the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, and an American Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Life Ayanna Lloyd Banwo was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where she has said she was "made into a writer", and she currently lives in London, England.

Speaking about her childhood, she has said: "I grew up in a family where we always told stories and we were always readers. My grandfather only gave my cousins and me books for Christmas." Before becoming an author, she worked at several jobs involving writing, including corporate communications, advertising, as an English and literature teacher for 10 years, and also as a freelance writer for newspapers.

Following the deaths of her mother, father and grandmother between 2013 and 2015, she decided to take writing seriously as a career. Speaking on the influence of these deaths on her writing, she has said: "I've promised my dead three books. It is a pact that I've made with people who are not here anymore." Her first short story was published in 2014. and Mentoring with the Masters Workshop with Earl Lovelace in 2014, and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop in 2016.

She received a full tuition scholarship to the University of East Anglia's creative writing master's programme in 2017, completing her studies with financial aid from GoFundMe donors and a benefactor who took interest in her work.

She has been featured in the "Who's Next?" segment for emerging writers at the Bocas Lit Fest and Bocas South. a child-led project exploring the colonial history of 11 National Trust properties. She has recorded a reading of her work "The Shadow Man" and answered questions on her contribution to the project for The Commissioned Writer's Podcast.

Her first novel, When We Were Birds, was published in February 2022 by Hamish Hamilton. Author Marlon James described the book as "A searing symphony of magic and loss, love and hope",

She is currently working on her second novel. Speaking to The Observer, she has said: "The novel looks at a house that has been passed down through five generations of women, and the protagonist has returned home to inherit this house. She’s going to sell it off because her life is not in Trinidad anymore and then finds that she can’t for various mysterious, supernatural reasons. It tracks a relationship with a house that doesn’t want to be parted from her." Addressing her work's connection to Trinidad, she has said: “I think that my sensibility for story has always been indigenous Caribbean cadence, whether how a character speaks, how a story might unfold, or the kinds of things you might find [in the plot]." In the same year, she was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition, where she received second prize for her short story "Public Notice" in 2016.

When We Were Birds featured in several lists of the most-anticipated novels of 2022, including The Irish Times and The New Statesman. She featured in The Observers list of the 10 best debut novelists of 2022. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Jhalak Prize. It won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. It also won the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and an American Book Award.

She won the 2023 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's award, together with Jarred McGinnis.