Cheswayo Mphanza was born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised in Chicago, Illinois. His work has been featured in the New England Review, the Paris Review, Hampden-Sydney Review, Boston Review, Lolwe, and  elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers  Conference, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Callaloo, Cave Canem, and  Columbia University. A finalist for the Brunel International African  Poetry Prize, a recipient of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for College  Writers, winner of the 2020 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest, and a  Creative Capital 2022 awardee, his debut collection The Rinehart Frames (University  of Nebraska Press), is the winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for  African Poets and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics  Circle Award for poetry. He earned his MFA from Rutgers-Newark and  currently serves as the editor in chief for Lampblack. He is working on a  novel.

Visiting Writer Cheswayo Mphanza (poetry)