 She is the General Secretary for African Writers Abroad (PEN) and organises the Writers' HotSpot - trips for writers abroad, where she teaches creative writing and journalism courses.Born in London of Sierra Leonean heritage, Sesay is a graduate of Birmingham University, in England, where she majored in West African studies.She then became a freelance journalist, and from the mid-1990s until 1998 worked as a black literature development co-ordinator for the Centreprise Literature Development Project, where she set up the newspaper "Calabash".