Afaa Weaver

Afaa Michael Weaver is a poet, playwright and translator. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, most recently Spirit Boxing (Pitt Poetry Series, 2017). Other recent books include City of Eternal Spring (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, The Government of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985-2005 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). Described by Henry Louis Gates, Jr as “one of the most significant poets writing today,” Weaver’s many honors include four Pushcart prizes, inclusion in Best American Poetry (2014, 2015), The May Sarton Award, a Pew Fellowship, a Fulbright scholarship to teach at National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts, and the Gold Friendship Medal from the Beijing Writers’ Association. As a playwright, in addition to an NEA fellowship, he won the PDI award in playwriting from the ETA Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago for his play Elvira and the Lost Prince. Some of his poetry has been translated into Arabic and Chinese, and, having studied at the Taipei Language Institute in Taiwan, Weaver himself has done translation and written poems of his own in Chinese.