Suhaiymah is an educator, writer and poet from Leeds. She is interested in words - what they hide, reveal, distract us from, and make possible. Her work disrupts and questions narratives about race, knowledge, and power - interrogating the root purpose of conversations about Muslims, migrants, gender, and violence in particular.

She was the runner-up of the Roundhouse National poetry slam 2017 with her viral poem, This is Not a Humanising Poem which gained 2 million views and was short-listed for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry in 2018. Her poetry collection, Postcolonial Banter was published with Verve Poetry Press in 2019, exploring racism, history and narratives of ‘Britishness’.

Her latest book, Seeing for Ourselves: and Even Stranger Possibilities was published with Hajar Press in 2023. The cross-genre work explores the limits of representation, inclusion and diversity in times of global violence and takes to the inner, and spirituality, for a way out. This comes on the back of her book, Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia published with Pluto Press in 2022. This was a widely endorsed non-fiction analysis of Islamophobia described as ‘one of the most exciting voices of her generation’ by award-winning channel 4 journalist Fatima Manji.

Suhaiymah has written for The Guardian, Independent, Al-Jazeera, gal-dem and other national media outlets and her work has featured across radio and television, magazines and digital media. Her poetry, articles and books can be found on University and school syllabi.

Suhaiymah’s essays appear in I Refuse to Condemn and Cut from the Same Cloth?, and her co-authored debut, A Fly Girl’s Guide to University: Being a woman of colour at Cambridge and other institutions of power and elitism - written with Odelia Younge, Lola Olufemi, and Audrey Sebatindira - captures part of her earlier intellectual and creative journey.

Since her poem This Is Not a Humanising Poem reached a wide audience in 2017, Suhaiymah has continued to write for the page, screen, and stage. Her debut play, Peanut Butter and Blueberries, premiered at the Kiln Theatre in London in 2024 and was nominated for the Best New Play award at the UK Theatre Awards that year. She has also been part of the Royal Court Writers’ Group (2021) and was Writer-in-Residence at Leeds Playhouse (2021–22), during which time her play Take Care had a public reading in Furnace Festival. She has been commissioned to write plays including: Brown Women Do It Too (Royal Court), A Coin in Somebody Else’s Pocket (Theatre Uncut), Whose Eyes Are These Anyway? (The Albany), My White Best Friend and other Letters Left Unsaid (The Bunker), and The End of Diaspora (Free Word Center)

As a public educator and workshop facilitator, she tries to create spaces rooted in care, trust, and collective exploration - spaces where people can be honest with themselves and each other, and imagine beyond the confines of empire, capitalism, and secular modernity.

Outside of writing, she co-founded The Nejma Collective, a volunteer-led abolitionist group working in solidarity with Muslims and all people in prison, towards a world where no one is caged as a result social problems.

Above all, she hopes that her work — however minimial or incremental — may be beneficial in this world, for her life in the next.