Dr Sanah Ahsan is a writer, poet, liberation psychologist and educator. Sanah’s work plays in the wild terrain of woundedness, the sacred landscapes of falling apart, centering compassion and embracing each other's madness. Their work draws on therapeutics, embodiment and poetics as life-affirming practices. Sanah leads and facilitates spiritual and liberatory retreat spaces, including regularly teaching alongside Lama Rod Owens. Some of Sanah’s media work includes writing for The Guardian, delivering a TED talk and presenting a Channel 4 documentary on the over-medicalisation of people’s distress. Sanah is working on a non-fiction book about the politics of distress, and society’s relationship with unruly emotions.

As a poet, Sanah won the Outspoken Poetry Performance Prize, has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, White Review Poetry Prize and Bridport Poetry Prize. Sanah’s debut poetry collection I cannot be good until you say it was published with Bloomsbury in March 2024, and is a meditation on Islam, queerness and goodness. It has been shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, Polari First Book Prize and selected as one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry books.