Afaa M. Weaver

Afaa Michael Weaver (born 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland), formerly known as Michael S. Weaver, is an American poet, short-story writer, and editor. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, and his honors include a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Foundation, and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He is the Director of the Writing Intensive at The Frost Place.

Life
Born in Maryland, he studied two years at the University of Maryland. He started 7th Son Press and the literary journal Blind Alleys. He graduated from Brown University on a fellowship, with an M.A, and Excelsior University with a B.A. He taught at National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts as a Fulbright Scholar, and was a faculty member at the Cave Canem Foundation's annual retreat. In addition, he was the first to be named an elder of the Cave Canem Foundation. He also studied Chinese language at the Taipei Language Institute in Taiwan.

He teaches at Simmons College, and is director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center. He is Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference. Tess Onwueme, the Nigerian playwright, gave him the Ibo name "Afaa", meaning "oracle", while Dr. Perng Ching-hsi has given him the Chinese name "Wei Yafeng".

His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including Callaloo.

Honors and awards

 * 2023 Wallace Stevens Award
 * 2014 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
 * 2002 Fulbright Scholarship
 * 1985 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship
 * 1998 Pew Fellowships in the Arts

Published works
Full-length poetry collections
 * A Fire in the Hills (Pasadena: Red Hen Press, 2023)
 * Spirit Boxing (Pitt Poetry Series, 2017)
 * The City of Eternal Spring(Pitt Poetry Series, 2014)
 * A Hard Summation (Central Square Press, 2014)
 * The Government of Nature (Pitt Poetry Series, 2013)
 * The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)
 * Timber and Prayer: The Indian Pond Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995)
 * My Father’s Geography (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)
 * Callaloo series
 * My Father’s Geography (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)
 * Callaloo series

Plays
 * Rosa was produced in 1993 at Venture Theater in Philadelphia

Anthologies edited

Anthology publications