Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo

Professor Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian author, playwright, and an accomplished poet. She is also the author of a number of children's books. She attended the Wesley Girls' High School and received her bachelor of arts in English from the University of Ghana, where she wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. Her works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African world views. Many of her protagonists are women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time.

Between 1964 and 1966 Ama was a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. In 1974, she became a consulting professor to the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Ethnic Studies Program and was a fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University. She also served as a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, and has taught at the English Departments of the Universities of Ghana and Cape Coast, and at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She has served as a Visiting Professor in the African Studies Department at Brown University, USA. In January 1982 she was appointed Minister of Education, resigning after 18 months. In 2000, Aidoo established Mbaasem, a foundation dedicated to promoting the work of Ghanaian and African women writers.

Her works include Dilemma of A Ghost, Our Sister Kill Joy, The Girl Who Can, and Changes, which won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Africa). Her other works are Diplomatic Pounds and Other Stories and An Angry Letter in January and other poems. Her latest work is After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems.