Hassan Baraka was born in Lunsar in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. He attended Milton Margai Teachers' College and later gained a Master of Science degree with honours from Tashkent Agricultural Institute, Soviet Union. He worked briefly as a banker in Sierra Leone before emigrating to the USA and is a businessman in the state of Maryland. He is married with three children. His first two novels are, A Woman of Conscience, published in 2008, and Leaves from the Calabash, officially released on October 27, 2011 by American Book Publishing.