Yarri was born in Sierra Leone and grew up in Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti and Germany, and then spent two decades living in Burkina Faso. She studied Economics and French Literature and Language at the University of Virginia in the US and holds an MA from Sciences Po in Paris. Yarri is a writer, translator and policy researcher. She was a fellow of the inaugural Goethe Institut Young African Writers Residency in 2021. She has been awarded several translation grants and was shortlisted for the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose in the US for her translation of So Distant From My Life by Monique Ilboudo. Her essays and poems have appeared on several platforms including Africa is a Country, The Republic, Lolwe, Brittle Paper, The Weganda Review and Poets Reading the News. She co-edited the anthology Sahara: A thousand paths into the future, published by Sternberg Press in 2023. Yarri is currently based in Milan, Italy.
