Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980. Ishmael lived a fairly happy life in Sierra Leone until the civil war broke out and like other civilians, he is forced to run for his life and was forced to be separated from his family. He is the protagonist of the book A Long Way Gone and he is central to understanding the horrors of war in Sierra Leone, because he became a boy soldier. Ishmael lost his mother, father, and his two brothers to murder by the revels. He moved to the United States in 1998 after he was rescued from being a child soldier at the age of sixteen by the UNICEF. He finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. In 2004 he graduated from the Oberlin College with a B.A. in political science. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee. Has spoken before the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by war. He has also spoken before the United Nations on several occasions. His work has appeared in Vespertine Press and LIT magazine. He lives in New York City.