Sanah Ahsan

Dr Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist, educator and presenter. They won the Out-Spoken Poetry Performance Prize (2019), and have been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize (2022); White Review Poetry Prize (2022); Bridport Poetry Prize (2021); Frontier Poetry Prize (2021); and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition (2021). Their poetry has been published in The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, The White Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, 14 Poems, and Stillpoint, and featured on Channel 4 and BBC 4. Ahsan is part of the BBC Words First alumni and the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective 2022/23.

Outside of poetry, Ahsan’s therapeutic work is centred on compassion, troubling our colonial understandings of ‘mental health’ and embracing each other’s madness. Their published research is on the deconstruction of whiteness within UK clinical psychology, and their non-fiction writing has appeared in the likes of the Guardian. Ahsan is currently working on a non-fiction book about liberation psychology and embracing madness. Their debut poetry collection is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2024/25.