30 Poets in 30 Days

Afaa Weaver: We met up with Afaa at the #RedHen booth at the Associated Writing Programs Conference Book Fair in Seattle where he was signing his latest book "Fire in the Hills." (A fabulous book, by the way, and another that came home with me. So much for my decision to not overload my suitcase! Worth it!) I admit I was so awestruck meeting Afaa I was somewhat tongue-tied. He was incredibly gracious despite my awkwardness. Add the bonus conversation I had with his wife talking about her horse, which included photos(!), and I have to say this was from start to finish a grand encounter at AWP! 

 Described by Henry Louis Gates as “one of the most significant poets writing today,” Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of fifteen books of poems that explore the depths and intersections of the personal and the public. The son of a sharecropper, he grew up in working class Baltimore, did a stint in the Army, and spent fifteen years as a factory worker, during which time he wrote intermittently and founded Seventh Son Press and the literary journal Blind Alleys. Weaver released Water Song in 1985, and won an NEA fellowship in the same year. 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.