Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays, including Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2013). He has edited more than a dozen anthologies. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska and in the Pacific MFA Program. He is the director of the African Poetry Book Fund and the artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival.

http://www.kwamedawes.com/

See Work

VIDEO

The Guardy and the Shame

By Kwame Dawes , Photography by Andre Lambertson

Kwame Dawes confronts the legacy of homophobia and the shame in Jamaica’s largely Christian culture.

VIDEO

To Disclose or Not?

By Kwame Dawes , Photography by Andre Lambertson

In early December 2013 and early 2014, writer Kwame Dawes and photographer Andre Lambertson traveled to Jamaica to investigate the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS in the Christian church.

REPORTING / Winter 2015

The Guardy and the Shame

By Kwame Dawes , Photography by Andre Lambertson

Jamaicans are primed to contend with all who speak ill of their country. As someone who grew up and lived in Jamaica until my midtwenties—although I now live in the US—I understand how the culture reacts to criticism.

ESSAYS / Spring 2011

City of Dust, City of Stones

By Kwame Dawes , Photography by Andre Lambertson

Photographer Andre Lambertson and I visited Haiti together four times during 2010. We spent a week there on each occasion. We were there to learn and tell the story of HIV/AIDS in Haiti after the earthquake. Three hundred thousand Haitians...

Summer 2010