Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, "easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters". [1]
Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, "easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters". [1]
Born in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia, Frank Chipasula attended St. Peter's Primary School on Likoma Island, Soche Hill Day Secondary School, Malosa Secondary School, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, [1] and, finally, the Great East Road Campus of the University of Zambia, Lusaka, where he graduated B.A., in exile, in 1976. Before leaving Malawi, Chipasula had worked as a freelance broadcaster for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation while studying English and French at the university. In Lusaka, he served as English Editor for the National Educational Company of Zambia (NECZAM), his first publisher, following his graduation from the University of Zambia. [2] [3]
In 1978 Chipasula went into exile in the United States as a result of the Hastings Banda government, studying for his M.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University, a second M.A. in African American Studies at Yale University and gaining a Ph.D. in English literature from Brown University in 1987. [4] Previously a professor of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Howard University, Chipasula has also worked as the education attaché at the Malawian embassy in Washington, D.C.. His first book, Visions and Reflections (1972), is also the first published poetry volume in English by a Malawian writer. As well as poetry, which has been widely anthologised, he has written radio plays and fiction. [5]
In 2018, Frank Chipasula organized the Women's Poetry Festival in Malawi. [3]
Since January 10, 1976, Chipasula has been married to Stella, a former school teacher, whom he met in Mulanje, Malawi, in 1972. With her he co-edited The Heinemann book of African women's poetry (1995). They have two grown children, James Masauko Mgeni Akuzike and Helen Chipo.
Chipasula's works include: [6]
Gabriel Imomotimi Okara was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery, and he has been called "the Nigerian Negritudist". According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, "It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun."
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Jack Mapanje is a Malawian writer and poet. He was the head of English at the Chancellor College, the main campus of the University of Malawi before being imprisoned in 1987 for his collection Of Chameleons and Gods, which indirectly criticized the administration of President Hastings Banda. He was released in 1991 and emigrated to the UK, where he worked as a teacher.
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John O. Reed was an anthologist and translator of African literature.
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Malama Katulwende is a Zambian author and thinker, born in the Luapula province. A teacher by profession and educated in Catholic Seminaries and at the University of Zambia (UNZA), he first appeared on the literary scene with poems published in an anthology titled Under the African Skies: Poetry form Zambia in 2001.
Assumpta Oturu is a Ugandan-American journalist and poet. She hosts a weekly radio programme, 'Spotlight Africa', on the Los Angeles–based radio station KPFK. She has published poetry as Assumpta Acam-Oturu.
Mvula ya Nangolo was a Namibian journalist and poet.
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