Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty-two books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His collection, Nebraska was published in 2019. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. He is also teaches in the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director 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, National Press Club Joan Friedenberg Award for Online Journalism, the Forward Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Silver Medal for contribution to the Arts in Jamaica, the Governor’s Award for service to the arts in South Carolina, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry. In 2009 he was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
In 2021, Kwame Dawes was named editor of American Life in Poetry.
