Tjawangwa Dema is a Motswana poet, teaching artist, arts administrator, as well as a research associate in the creative writing department at the University of the Witwatersrand. Dema’s chapbook Mandible was selected for inclusion in the African Poetry Book Fund’s New-Generation African Poets boxset series. Her first full-length collection, The Careless Seamstress, won the Sillerman First Book Prize in 2018. In 2022 her eco-poetry collection an/other pastoral was a finalist for the African Studies Association’s Aidoo-Snyder book prize and named a notable book by Brittle Paper. Dema has since been appointed an editorial board member of the On African Poetry book series and serves as a judge of the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. Her essays and chapters on approaches to teaching poetry are published by Goldsmiths, University of London’s Centre for Language, Culture and Learning, as well as in a special edition of the Modern Language Association. Recent translations of Tjawangwa’s books are available in languages including German and Brazilian Portuguese. Having begun her literary career as a spoken word poet, Dema also continues to collaboratively explore the oral/aural through the medium of her celebrated poetry films.
