[1] Her debut novel When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton) was released in 2022 and won the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

[2] Ayanna Lloyd Banwo was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where she has said she was "made into a writer",[3] and currently lives in London, England.

"[5] Before becoming an author, she worked several jobs involving writing, including corporate communications, advertising, as an English and literature teacher for 10 years, and also as a freelance writer for newspapers.

She received a full tuition scholarship to the University of East Anglia's creative writing master's programme in 2017, completing her studies with financial aid from GoFundMe donors and a benefactor who took interest in her work.

[11] She has recorded a reading of her work "The Shadow Man" and answered questions on her contribution to the project for The Commissioned Writer's Podcast.

[15] In the same year, she was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition, where she received second prize for her short story "Public Notice" in 2016.

[14] Author Marlon James described the book as "A searing symphony of magic and loss, love and hope",[13] while Kirkus Reviews praised the novel's "unique world expansive enough to contain a ghost story, a love story, a mysterious mythology, and a thoughtful examination of how family bonds keep us firmly rooted to our pasts.