Multi award-winning Zambian author and Editor-in-Chief of Ubwali Literary Magazine, Mubanga Kalimamukwento, has just announced another upcoming book, a hybrid collection of essays and poems titled Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies.
Earlier in Q1 of 2024, Mubanga was named the winner of the Drue Heinz Literary Prize with her collection of short stories, Obligations to the Wounded which is slated for release later in October 2024.
Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies is therefore yet another literary offering for her teeming readers to look forward to. The multi-lingual, hybrid collection of essays and poems is described as a kaleidoscope of emotions: at once self-excavation and epitaph, exhumation and burial song. These words are a conversation between the present and the past.
“…joy wilts, Dust to dust, the preacher calls it Ashes to ashes, as mwana tosses it mangles itself inside her nostrils now the aroma of starved earth, the brilliant white of a mother’s new coffinment waiting to receive it.”
In this book, Mubanga deftly navigates the aftermath of devastating personal losses, particularly that of her mother. Through them, she invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of loss and the enduring impact of familial bonds.
About the Author
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian poet; her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Tusculum Review, Contemporary Verse 2, and Passengers Journal and has been translated into Italian by Menelique. She won the 2021 Deborah Keenan Poetry Scholarship and the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize, selected by Carmen Giménez. Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies was shortlisted for the 2023 (Center for African American Poetry and Poetics) CAAPP Book Prize.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento was the featured author on #JAYLitInterviewSeries in July 2024.
Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies is coming from Wayfarer Books in April 2025 and available for pre-order here.
