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9781636143057

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An ambitious, vital project that delivers exactly what it promises . . . As a group, the chapbooks dispel stereotypes about African writing. They also illustrate what editors Dawes and Abani note about the many ways poets can understand or redefine their ties to Africa. These insights are poignant and valuable, especially at a time when millions around the globe find themselves somewhere between new countries and ancestral lands they've left behind.-- ""Washington Post"" Dawes and Abani have taken on the vital project of publishing short collections by contemporary poets from Africa, packaged together in beautiful boxed sets.-- ""New York Times Magazine"" Since 2014, editors Dawes and Abani have been curating chapbooks penned by emerging African poets to create texts as beautifully printed as they are vital in their living and breathing words. Here, they've compiled their introductions to each chapbook box set they have produced during the decade from 2014 through 2024. Their introductory essays are both manifesto and new poetics, written in conversation with the voices of the poets who comprise a thriving African literary community. By publishing the introductory essays in a single volume, they offer a beautifully rendered and evolving conversation that is scholarly and theoretical yet viscerally human, as the best poetry often is . . . This collection offers a theoretical, historical, and cultural framework for African poetry and poetics that could be read as a stand-alone text or used as an entry point into any (or all) of the poets described.-- ""Library Journal, STARRED review"" The African Poetry Book Fund's New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set is one of the most important annual literary projects, presenting to a wide audience the work of fresh and promising poets in the continent and its diaspora.-- ""Open Country Magazine""

Author Information

KWAME DAWES is the author of numerous books of poetry and other works of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent poetry collection, Sturge Town, was published by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and W. W. Norton in the US. Dawes is a professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. He also 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 for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize 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, and in 2024, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica. CHRIS ABANI's prose includes The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections include Smoking the Bible, Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me the Sun, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne's Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He holds a BA and MA in English, an MA in gender and culture, and a PhD in literature and creative writing. Abani is the recipient of a PEN America Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He won the prestigious 2024 UNT Rilke Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born in Nigeria, he is currently on the board of trustees, a professor of English, and director of African Studies at Northwestern University. SIWAR MASANNAT is a Jordanian writer and the author of cue and 50 Water Dreams. Masannat holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, an MFA from George Mason University, and a BSc from the University of Jordan. Masannat works as Managing Editor of the African Poetry Book Fund and the Prairie Schooner.

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