½ðɳÓéÀÖ

Mahtem Shiferraw is a poet and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Fuchsia, (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets; Your Body Is War (University of Nebraska Press, 2019); and Nomenclatures of Invisibility (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2023). Her chapbook, Behind Walls and Glass, was published in 2015. Her work has been published in various literary magazines including Poets.org, Callaloo, The 2River View, Prairie Schooner, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Numero Cinq, Barrow Street Journal, At Length, World Literature Today, Chaos Hermeneutics Journal, and elsewhere. She is the founder and executive director of Anaphora Arts, a nonprofit organization that advocates for writers and artists of color. She has served as an editor, curator, or advisor for different literary journals including Atlas and Alice, The Bleeding Lion, The Hunger Mountain, and more. Shiferraw served as a jury member for different literary prizes, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. As of 2020, she also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today, where she curated the BlackVoices Series (2020, 2021) and the New African Voices portfolio.