Ayaan Abukar ()

Ayaan Abukar is a writer, freelance journalist and cultural programmer with an academic background in political science and international security. Working across art, media and culture, she combines a multidisciplinary creative practice with leadership experience as Head of Programme at cultural institutions.

Her work connects personal stories to the broader systemic issues that impact our world today, with a particular interest in present and past stories that have been hidden, overlooked or left out of our collective memory.

At the heart of her practice is the belief that sharing stories, in any form, is an act of resistance.

In her debut book, Hotel Mogadishu (Feb 2024), Abukar shares an intimate portrait of Somalia's capital—her hometown—revealing the layered lives of both returning diaspora and those who never left, and their eternal search for home and belonging. Through her lens as an inside-outsider and keen observation, she reveals the resilience threading through everyday Somali existence, offering readers rare passage into a place often defined by a single story.