Literary Arts

Kwame Dawes is the author of thirty books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collections are Mortality (Peepal Tree Press, 2025) and Sturge Town (WW Norton, 2024), longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Prize 2025. Dawes is a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University and the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kwame Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In April 2024, he was named the Poet Laureate of Jamaica.