Kwame Dawes. Ghanaian-Jamaican writer and poet Kwame Dawes is the author of more than a dozen collections of verse, including the critically-acclaimed "Wisteria: Poems from the Swamp Country." Dawes is also the author of numerous plays, essays and books. Dawes is currently a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the editor-in-chief of Prairie Schooner. A former Distinguished Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina, he is the executive director and founder of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute as well and the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica in May of each year. www.kwamedawes.com