Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes (b 1962, Ghana) is the author of 22 works of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism and essays. His collection Nebraska was published in 2020. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska and in the Pacific MFA Programme. He is director of the African Poetry Book Fund and co-founder of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His awards include an Emmy, the Forward Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the prestigious Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry. In 2021, Dawes assumed the role of curator and editor of American Life in Poetry.