Khadijah Ibrahiim

• Name — Khadijah Ibrahiim • Honorific Suffix — FRSL • Birthplace — Leeds, England • Occupation — Literary activist, theatre maker and writer • Education — University of Leeds

Ibrahiim is of Jamaican parentage, her politically active grandparents were two of the 5,000 people who came to Leeds in the 1950s. She was born in Leeds and she would meet Jamaican musicians who visited her home. She attended the University of Leeds and has a master's degree in Theatre Studies. She has toured her work in America, Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

In 2003, she started Leeds Young Authors, running workshops in the Chapeltown area of Leeds funded by a small grant from the Arts Council. After a year, the money was gone but the enthusiasm remained, so the workers became volunteers. Ibrahiim attended the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica and she was one of the first international writers to attend the El Gouna Writers Residency in Egypt, 2010. In the following year, she was given the Leeds Black Award 2011 for outstanding contribution to arts. In 2013, she was one of several poets invited to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen and Prince Philip honoured the work of contemporary British poetry. In 2017, she was creative associate for the theatre production Ode To Leeds at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In 2008, she toured the USA with the Fwords Creative Freedom writers. She produces the Leeds Youth Poetry Slam Festival. Ibrahiim's work includes Dead and Wake, part of Connecting Voices, a collaboration between Leeds Playhouse and Opera North in 2020; The Promise of a Garden as associate director of the Performance Ensemble; Sorrel & Black Cake as writer and director with the Geraldine Connor Foundation; Symphonic Dancers, as writer and poet for Phoenix Dance. In 2019, Ibrahiim and two other poets were commissioned as part of the British Library, Leeds Libraries and Poet in the City collaboration Collections in Verse. She continued her work with the British Library and Leeds Libraries by hosting a spoken-word event with Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan as part of the Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights project. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Geraldine Connor Foundation organised an on-line event to celebrate Windrush Day. The event was hosted by Ibrahiim and academic Emily Zobel Marshall. Guests were the writer Colin Grant, poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Camille Quamina from Jamaica. Ibrahiim's poetry has been published by Peepal Tree Press, which publishes international writing from the Caribbean, its diasporas and the UK. Her work has appeared in university journals and poetry anthologies and on BBC Radio 4 Radio 3 and BBC Radio 1Xtra. Ibrahiim was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024 and awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Leeds in 2025.

Ibrahiim has a daughter, Rheima Robinson, who is also a poet.