Mapange, Jack (Current)

   Born in Kadango Village in southern Malawi, he was educated at a mission school, then at Zomba Catholic Secondary School. He has a B.A. degree and a diploma in education from the University of London. In 1975 he joined the staff of the Department of English at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, as a lecturer, then worked as a research student in linguistics at University College, London, in the early 1980s. Soon after his collection Of Chameleons and Gods (published in the U.K. in 1981) received the Rotterdam International Poetry Award in 1988, it was banned in Malawi. He was imprisoned without trial or charge by the Malawian government from 1987 to 1991. He lives in York and is currently teaching creative writing and literature of incarceration in the School of English, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 2002 he won the African Literature Association Fonlon-Nichols Award (USA). He has broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and acted as judge in BBC and commonwealth poetry competitions. Some of his other publications: The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison, 1993. Skipping Without Ropes, 1998. The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New and Selected Poems, 2004.

   Sources: An African Thunderstorm and Other Poems. Jack Mapange, ed. East African Publishing House (Nairobi), 2004. British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing. Jack Mapange, ed. Heinemann International (African Writers Series), 2002. National Poetry Day, 2002. Jack Mapange (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/natpoetday/jack_mapange.shtml). Oral Poetry from Africa. Jack Mapange, ed. Landeg White, Longman, 1983. Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa, Jack Mapange, Angus Calder and Cosmo Pieterse, eds. African Writers Series, Heinemann Educational, 1983. The African Writers' Handbook. Jack Mapange and James Gibbs, eds. African Books Collective, 1999. The International Poetry Festival in Medellín, 2004, Jack Mapange (http://colombia.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/22148).