Frank Chipasula

Dr. Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, "easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters".

Life
Born in Luanshya, Zambia, Frank Chipasula attended school in Zambia before proceeding to the University of Malawi, eventually gaining his B.A. through the University of Zambia in exile. Becoming a Malawian citizen, Chipasula worked as a freelance broadcaster for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and as an editor for the National Education Company of Zambia. In 1978 Chipasula went into exile in the United States as a result of the Hastings Banda government, studying for his M.A. at Yale University and gaining a Ph.D in English literature from Brown University in 1987 Previously a professor of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Howard University, Chipasula has also worked as the education attache at the Malawian embassy in Washington, D.C.. His 1972 collection, Visions and Reflections, was the first published poetry by a Malawian writer. In addition to his poetry, which has been widely anthologised, he has written radio plays and fiction.

Recognition

 * Honourable mention Noma Award, 1985
 * BBC Poetry Prize, 1989

=Publications==
 * Visions and Reflections, Lusaka: NEZCAM, 1972.
 * ''O Earth, Wait for Me', Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984.
 * (ed.) When my brothers come home: poems from central and southern Africa, Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press; Scranton, Pa.: Distributed by Harper & Row, 1985.
 * Nightwatcher, nightsong, Peterborough: P. Green, 1986.
 * Whispers in the wings: poems, Heinemann, 1991. African Writers Series.
 * A Decade in Poetry, Lusaka: Kenneth Kaunda Foundation, 1991.
 * (ed. with Stella Chipasula) The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry, Heinemann, 1995.
 * On the shoulders of the mountain: a selection of poems, 2007.
 * (ed.) Bending the bow : an anthology of African love poetry, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.