Authors
Find your favorite authors featured in WLT or browse the entire list.
Niyi Osundare
Nigerian poet, playwright, essayist, and scholar Niyi Osundare has authored eighteen books of poetry, two books of selected poems, four plays, two books of essays, and numerous scholarly articles and reviews. Among his many prizes are the Tchicaya U Tam’si Award for African Poetry (generally regarded as Africa’s highest poetry prize) and the Fonlon/Nichols Award for “excellence in literary creativity combined with significant contributions to Human Rights in Africa.” Former professor and chair of the English Department, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, he is currently Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.
Jamal Ouariachi
Dutch writer Jamal Ouariachi won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2017 for his novel A Hunger, which is currently being translated into ten different languages.
Kyrié Eleison Owen
Kyrié Eleison Owen is an Indigenous writer with an MFA in creative writing, nonfiction, from University of California Riverside and a BA in creative writing from University of Cincinnati. She has words in Lunch Ticket, The Nasiona, Boshemia, and Waxing & Waning, among other literary journals, and has shared her work onstage at True Theatre.
© Bernd Hartungdiv>Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (b. 1968) is the author of the novel Dust, which was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. Winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, she has also received an Iowa Writers’ Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications, and she has been a TEDx Nairobi speaker and a Lannan Foundation resident. She lives in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House
Nilay Özer
An Istanbul-born and raised poet, Nilay Özer received her PhD from Bilkent University and teaches Turkish, creative writing, and modern Turkish literature at major universities in Istanbul. Following her early poems published in various literary magazines, Ozer’s first poetry volume, Zamana Dağılan Nar (Pomegranate scattered across time) appeared in 1999. Her second book, Ol! (Be!), received the Cemal Süreya Poetry Award in 2004. Her most recent poetry volume, Korkuluklara Giysi Yardımı (Clothes-drive for scarecrows), was published in 2015.
Toti O’Brien
Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. Born in Rome, living in Los Angeles, she is an artist, musician, and dancer. She is the author of Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020) and An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise Press, 2020).
Laurence O’Dwyer
Laurence O’Dwyer is a graduate of University College Cork and holds a PhD in paradigms of memory formation from Trinity College Dublin. In 2017 he received a MacDowell Fellowship. In 2016 he won the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry. He has also won a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Poetry. His brain-imaging research in autism and Alzheimer’s disease has been published in a range of academic journals, and his science journalism appears in the Guardian and the Irish Medical Times. In 2016 he devoted his time to writing and long-distance mountain running, mostly in the Pyrenees. Current projects include a collaboration with Asylum Productions for a theater performance that merges poetry and an academic lecture about memory and neuroscience. He also collaborates with Swedish indie game developer Macalaus, contributing texts for a game about space-travel and the search for home.
Tess O’Dwyer
Tess O’Dwyer is a translator, editor, and arts consultant in New York City. She and Frederick Luis Aldama co-edited Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi (2020), with a foreword by Ilan Stavans. She also translated Empire of Dreams (1994), by Giannina Braschi, and Martin Rivas (2000), by Alberto Blest Gana. She is a board member of the Academy of American Poets.
Photo: Michael Markl div>Mandakini Pachauri
Mandakini Pachauri is an Indian poet writing in English. She lives in Vienna and is currently pursuing the Pan-European MFA at Cedar Crest College.
Ben Packham
Ben Packham lives in Sydney, Australia, working as an accountant. In his spare time, he indulges his hobbies of photography, woodworking, and riding his motorbike. He spent a year living and working in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, with the United Nations between 2011 and 2012.
Deena Padayachee
Deena Padayachee is a native of Durban, South Africa, and works as a medical doctor in an Apartheid-era township in the city. During Apartheid, when the publishing of such tales was virtually impossible in the mainstream South African magazines, his short stories were published mainly in New York (Short Story International). During Apartheid, he published a book of prose poems called A Voice from the Cauldron (1987). His prizewinning book, What’s Love Got to Do with It? was prescribed for Kwa Zulu Natal matric students in 2004. His short stories have been widely anthologized.
Alexandra Pagán Vélez
Alexandra Pagán Vélez is the author of the story collections El diccionario y el Capitán (2010), Amargo (2014, 2018), Eneida y Martín: dos coquíes muy distintos (2018), Horror-REAL (2017, 2020), and Relatos de domingos (2014). She has also published the poetry collections Del Alzheimer y otros demonios (2014) and Cuando era niña hablaba como niña (2014).
Courtesy of NHPR (http://nhpr.org)div>Tom Paine
Tom Paine’s story “Oppenheimer Beach” appeared in the November 2012 issue of WLT. His poetry is upcoming or published in The Nation, Glasgow Review of Books, Volt, Fence, Blackbox Manifold (Cambridge), The Common, Epiphany, Green Mountain Review, Forklift, Tinderbox, Hunger Mountain, Hotel Amerika, Gulf Stream, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New England Review, The Boston Review, Best New Southern Stories, The O. Henry Awards and twice in the Pushcart Prize anthology. He has won fellowships from Sewanee, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf and written for Francis Ford Coppola. His first collection, Scar Vegas (Harcourt), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway finalist. A graduate of Princeton and the Columbia MFA program, he is an associate professor in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire ([email protected]).
Frank Paino
Frank Paino’s poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including North American Review, Briar Cliff Review, and Lake Effect. He has received a Pushcart Prize, the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His third book, Obscura, is forthcoming from Orison Books in 2020.
Al Panteliat
Al Panteliat is a poet and literary translator from Kharkiv. His work has appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation (UK) as well as such journals as Krechatik, Deti Ra, and Novoya Yunost.
Stephanie Papa
Stephanie Papa is a poet and translator living in Paris, France. She is the poetry co-editor of Paris Lit Up literary magazine and holds an MFA in poetry from the Pan-European program. Her work has been published in World Literature Today, Niche, NOON, great weather for media, Four Chambers Press, and more.
Photo: Francesco Gattonidiv>Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Winner of multiple international awards including Ghana’s ACRAG award and France’s Prix Laure Bataillon, Nii Ayikwei Parkes is the author of Tail of the Blue Bird (novel) and The Makings of You (poetry). He is currently working on a crowd-funded collection of short stories, The City Will Love You (2018).
Photo: Shane Eppingdiv>Keija Parssinen
Keija Parssinen is the author of the novels The Ruins of Us, which received the Michener-Copernicus Award, and The Unraveling of Mercy Louis, which earned an Alex Award from the American Library Association. She is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Kenyon College.
Elise Paschen
Elise Paschen is a member of the Osage Nation. She is the author of The Nightlife (forthcoming), Bestiary, and Infidelities (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize winner). Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, including the New Yorker and Poetry. Co-editor of Poetry Speaks and Poetry in Motion, she teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Photo © Marta Eloy Cichockadiv>Edward Pasewicz
Edward Pasewicz is a Polish poet and composer born in 1971. A Buddhist, he is the author of six books of poetry, including Verses for Róy Filipowicz (2004), th (2005), Songs of Henry Berryman (2006) (after John Berryman’s Dream Songs), Death in a Darkroom (2007), Fine! Fine! (2008), and Bertolt Brecht’s Palace (2011). Since 2010 he has lived in Kraków, where he is director of the performance space Scena 21.
Abdulla Pashew
Arguably the most popular living Kurdish poet, Abdulla Pashew draws audiences in the thousands when he gives readings. In addition to his eight volumes of poetry, Pashew is a prolific translator, fluent in Russian and English, responsible for bringing Whitman and Pushkin to Kurdish readership. He holds a master’s degree in pedagogy and a doctorate in philology.
Photo:Joelly Rodríguez div>Mara Pastor
Mara Pastor is a leading Puerto Rican poet, editor, and scholar. Pastor is the author of several collections of poetry, including Natal Debt, translated by María José Giménez and Anna Rosenwong, which was selected for the 2020 Ambroggio Prize, given by the Academy of American Poets, and is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press. She is an associate professor of Spanish at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce.
J. R. Patterson
J. R. Patterson was born on a cattle and grain farm in rural Manitoba, Canada. He has worked as a farm laborer, factory worker, and writer. He has written for a variety of international publications, including National Geographic, Literary Review of Canada, and the LARB.
