Yvonne Bailey-Smith Calabash Festival

Mahtem Shiferraw

Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, and Luna Luna Magazine. She has authored three full-length poetry collections; Fuchsia (which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets), Your Body Is War, and Nomenclatures of Invisibility. She has served as an editor, curator or advisor for different literary journals including Atlas and Alice, The Bleeding Lion, and The Hunger Mountain. She is the founder and executive director of Anaphora Arts and is a Pushcart prize nominee. She also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today, where she curated the Black Voices Series (2020, 2021) and the New African Voices portfolio.

Instagram: @mahtem_shiferraw
Website: mahtem-shiferraw.com