Zambian writer Mubanga Kalimamukwento has been named to the judging panel for the 2026 Firecracker Awards in Fiction, organized by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). The awards celebrate outstanding works from independent publishers across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with Kalimamukwento winning in the fiction category in 2025.
Kalimamukwento is the author of The Mourning Bird and Obligations to the Wounded (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024), which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has appeared in adda, Aster(ix), Overland, Contemporary Verse 2, and Menelique. Beyond her writing, she is the founding editor of Ubwali Literary Magazine, co-founder of the Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop, and a mentor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Currently based in Minnesota, Kalimamukwento is pursuing a PhD in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. She holds an MFA from Hamline University, where she was awarded the Writer of Color Merit Scholarship and the Deborah Keenan Poetry Scholarship.
She joins Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, author of The Missing Morningstar: And Other Stories, and Mikey LaFave, operations manager at Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia, on this year’s fiction panel.
Submissions for the 2026 Firecracker Awards will be accepted from September 15 to November 14, 2025. To submit, click here.
Congratulations, Mubanga Kalimamukwento!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
