Mubanga Kalimamukwento Wins Cheryl A. Wall Graduate Student Paper Prize

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Zambian writer Mubanga Kalimamukwento has been named the 2025 winner of the Cheryl A. Wall Graduate Student Paper Prize for her work Ukazi: An Autoethnography of Zambian Girlhood and Womanhood.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is the author of Shipikisha (Dzanc Books, 2026), winner of the 2024 Dzanc Prize for Fiction; Obligations to the Wounded (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024), which won both the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the 2025 Minnesota Book Award; Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies (Wayfarer Books, 2025), finalist for the 2023 CAAPP Book Prize; and The Mourning Bird (Jacana, 2019), winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in adda, Aster(ix), Isele Magazine, Kweli, Overland, and other journals.

Beyond her writing, she founded Ubwali Literary Magazine and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Feminist Studies as an Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) Scholar at the University of Minnesota.

The Cheryl A. Wall Prize, established to honor the legacy of the late literary critic and Black feminist scholar, recognizes graduate student work that advances Black feminist thought.

Congratulations, Mubanga Kalimamukwento!

Bakare Oluwatobiloba

I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!