Mildred Kiconco Barya

Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet from Uganda now living in North Carolina. Her publications include three earlier poetry books, as well as prose, hybrids, and poems published in Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Prairie Schonner and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction, and earlier gained recognition for her poetry, particularly her first two collections, Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say (2002) and The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami (2006).

Barya is a founding member and serves on the advisory board of African Writers Trust “a non-profit entity which seeks to coordinate and bring together African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent to promote sharing of skills and other resources, and to foster knowledge and learning between the two groups.” She is also a board member at Story Parlour. She coordinates the Poetrio Reading events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/ Cafe and teaches creative writing and literature at UNC-Asheville. The Animals of My Earth School is her fourth full-length poetry collection.