Tjawangwa Dema

Born 14 August 1981 in Gaborone, Botswana

Poetry, academic text / essay, monologue

AUTHOR BIO

Tjawangwa Dema is author of The Careless Seamstress, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize. Mandible was a New-Generation African Poets box set chapbook and her 2022 collection, an/other pastoral, was a finalist for both the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize and the Luschei Prize.

An arts administrator and teaching artist, Tjawangwa previously co-produced the Africa Writes Festival in Bristol and has received fellowships, support and residencies from institutions including the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Danish International Visiting Artist program as well as Arts Council England. As a researcher she has carried out literary research for the University of Bristol’s AMLA project, University of Witwatersrand Creative Writing Department as well as the National Arts Council of Botswana.

TJ has given readings and facilitated workshops in well over twenty countries. Her poetry has mostly recently been translated into a German and Portuguese.

LINKS

• https://tjdema.com
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACSWgZcV4DQ
• https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2022/11/15/two-poems-by-tjawangwa-dema-from-an-other-pastoral/

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• an/other pastoral, NoBindings 2022 / AgaMotse 2025.
• The Careless Seamstress, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.
• Mandible, Slapering Hol Press, 2014.
• Meuterin, parasitenpresse, 2022.
• A costureira descuidada, Fosforo Editora, 2022.
• “Anthropocene Storytelling: Ecological Writing and Pedagogies of Planetary Change.” (Co-authored with Kirk B. Sides) Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media, ed. Cajetan N. Iheka. New York: Modern Language Association, 2021.
• “How to Read a Poetry Class: Teaching Poetry in the 21st Century.” Inspire: Exciting Ways to Teach Creative Writing, edited by Emma Brankin, F Gilbert, C Sharples. London: Goldsmiths CLCL, (2020) pp. 94 -106.
• “Unreliable Narrator.” The Forgotten and the Unforgettable, Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2016, pp. 378 – 387.