Ber Anena

Ber Anena is a Ph.D. student in English (Creative Writing). The Ugandan-born writer is interested in indigenous African feminisms, the recognition of the body as a voice, and legitimizing impoliteness and vulgarity in women’s resistance. Anena holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Columbia University in New York, an M.A. in Human Rights, and a B.A. in Mass Communication from Makerere University in Uganda. Her debut poetry collection, A Nation in Labour, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2018. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2018) and longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize (2017 & 2018). In 2023, three of her poems were shortlisted for the Isele Poetry Prize. Anena’s prose and poetry have been published in The Atlantic, Off Assignment, adda, The Caine Prize anthology, Brittle Paper, Isele, The Plentitudes, the New Daughters of Africa anthology, The Kalahari Review, among others. As a performance poet, Anena has graced the stage in New York, Berlin, Kampala, Nairobi, Edinburg, Antwerp, and Lincoln, among others. She’s the Graduate Assistant for the African Poetry Book Distribution project and an Editorial Assistant for Prairie Schooner.