Toward a Living Archive of African Poetry

Chris Abani is the acclaimed author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hemingway/PEN Prize, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. Born in Nigeria, he is currently a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago.

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He is a chancellor emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the Windham-Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Kwame Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.