Author Profiles

Ohio has a rich literary heritage as well as some wonderful contemporary authors. Learn more about them here! You can sort by various categories and see who has participated in our annual book festival by using the category search on the left, or search by keyword (including partial author names) by using the search field on the right.

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Photo of Yalie Saweda Kamara

Yalie Saweda Kamara

Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D. is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California. She is the 2022-2025 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Kamara is the author of the poetry collection Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which was noted in The New York Times, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers.…Read More

Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D. is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California. She is the 2022-2025 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Kamara is the author of the poetry collection Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which was noted in The New York Times, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Kamara earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University. For more, please visit: http://www.yaylala.com