Mubanga Kalimamukwento (born 1988) [1] is a Zambian writer, known for her novel [2] The Mourning Bird, [3] which focuses on Zambia's AIDS crisis, and Obligations to the Wounded, her thematically linked collection of short stories centring the lives of Zambian women and girls. [4] The Mourning Bird was awarded the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award in 2018/2019. [5] In 2024, she became the first African writer [6] to win the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature. [7] In 2025, Obilgations to the Wounded won a Minnesota Book Award in the Novel & Short Story category [8] and was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, an award focused on women writers. [9]
Obligations to the Wounded was also listed among The 75 best books of 2024 [10] by The Boston Globe, 100 Notable African Books of 2024 by Brittle Paper, a Notable Book From Africa in 2024 by Afrocritik. [11]
In 2025, Mubanga published her debut hybrid collection of poems and essays, Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies, [12] a finalist for the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Book Prize 2023. [13]
Mubanga was born in Lusaka, Zambia. She earned her bachelor's degree in Law from Cavendish University Zambia, [14] a master's degree in Law from the University of Minnesota, [15] and a master's degree in Fine Arts from Hamline University. [16] She is currently a PhD student in the department of Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies at the University of Minnesota. [17]