Tijan Sallah

Tijan M. Sallah (born 6 March 1958) is a Gambian poet and prose writer and economist.

Early life Tijan Sallah was born in Serekunda, The Gambia, on 6 March 1958. His mother was of Wolof ethnicity and his father was a Tukulor, who, according to Sallah, was a descendant of the ruling families of Futa Tooro. He attended koranic schools (locally known as daras) from the age of four, before entering Serrekunda Primary School, where he describes his teacher Harrietta Ndow as having been particularly influential. He then entered St. Augustine's High School, run by Irish Holy Ghost Fathers, and was exposed to classical British literary texts (Shakespeare's plays, Orwell's and Dickens' works, etc.) and the Bible. Although his father, Momodou Musa Sallah (Dodou Sallah), was imam of the local mosque in Serekunda, he did not mind his son studying the Bible, as it was part of the heritage of the Abrahamic religions.

Under these influences and encouraged by his teachers at St. Augustine's High School, in particular Joseph Gough, Sallah became interested in creative writing and started writing poetry by his third year. He published his first poem, "The African Redeemer", a poem paying tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, in the St. Augustine's school newspaper, Sunu Kibaro. Siga Jagne describes him as a writer of "genius". Nana Grey-Johnson describes Sallah as "one of the finest young minds The Gambia has produced in years".

On the publication of Sallah's most recent poetry collection, I Come From a Country, E. Ethelbert Miller said: "Sallah writes about home after traveling around the world. He offers love without apology. There is brightness in this book."

Professional career Sallah had been interested in becoming a medical doctor, but upon realising the difficulties associated with this as a foreigner in the US, he changed his focus to economics. He graduated from Berea College in economics and business as the most outstanding student there in 1982, and went on to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he received an MA and PhD in economics.

He taught economics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and North Carolina A&T University in the late 1980s, before joining the World Bank, where he is sector manager for agriculture, irrigation and rural development for eastern and southern African countries.

Personal life Sallah is married to the Malian Fatim Haidara, an engineer, and they have a daughter and son.

Awards and recognition Young Writers of The Gambia (YWAG) Prize for Gambian Literature, Writers Association of The Gambia

Works Poetry collections When Africa Was a Young Woman, Calcutta, India: Writers Workshop, 1980 Kora Land: poems, Washington DC.: Three Continents Press, US, 1989 Dreams of Dusty Roads: new poems, Washington DC: Three Continents Press, US, 1993 Dream Kingdom: new and selected poems, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007 Harrow: London Poems of Convalescence, Global Hands Publishing, Leicester, UK, 2014 I Come From a Country, Africa World Press, 2021

Anthologies (ed.) New Poets of West Africa, Malthouse Press, Nigeria, 1995 (ed.) with Tanure Ojaide, The New African Poetry: an anthology, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Colorado, 1999 (guest ed.) A World Assembly of Poets, Re-markings, Agra, India, Vol. 16, No. 4, November 2017

Short stories Before the New Earth: African short stories, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1988. "Weaverdom", in Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes, eds, Contemporary African Short Stories, 1992. "Innocent Terror", in Charles Larson (ed.), Under African Skies: Modern African Stories, 1997, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. "Innocent Terror", in Encounters from Africa, An Anthology of Short Stories, Macmillan Kenya Publishers, 2000, pp. 99–106.

Biography (with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) Chinua Achebe: Teacher of light: a biography, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003.

Ethnography Wolof, Rosen Publishing, 1996.

Literary criticism Saani Baat: Aspects of African Literature and Culture, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2021.