Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes at the Poe Room 2012
Born	(1962-07-28)28 July 1962 Ghana
Occupation	poet, documentary writer, editor, critic
Nationality	American
Education	University of the West Indies

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes (born 28 July 1962, Ghana) is an Emmy award-winning poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He is now Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief at Prairie Schooner magazine. New York-based Poets & Writers named Dawes as a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, which recognises writers who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 to Sophia and Neville Dawes, and in 1971 the family moved to Kingston, Jamaica, when Neville Dawes became deputy director of the Institute of Jamaica. Growing up in Jamaica, Kwame Dawes attended Jamaica College and the University of the West Indies at Mona, where he received a BA degree in 1983. He studied and taught in New Brunswick, Canada, on a Commonwealth Scholarship. In 1992 he earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of New Brunswick, where he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Brunswickan.

From 1992 to 2012 he taught at the University of South Carolina as a Professor in English, Distinguished Poet in Residence, Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, and Director of the USC Arts Institute. He was also the faculty advisor for the publication Yemassee. He won the 1994 Forward Poetry Prize, Best First Collection for Progeny of Air. He is currently a Chancellor's Professor of English and Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA program in Oregon.