Eliamani Ismail

Eliamani Ismail is a writer and filmmaker from Washington, D.C., via Mali and Tanzania. A former youth poet with the DC Youth Slam Team, she has performed at venues including the Kennedy Center and Planned Parenthood’s National Conference. She holds a BA in Africana Studies from Scripps College and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Eliamani was named a T.J. Watson Fellow, traveling to 10 countries to study storytelling traditions and their relationship to national identity and non-punitive justice. Her writing has been supported by fellowships from the Aspen Institute, Kimbilio for Black Fiction, Brooklyn Poets, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

A Pan-Africanist committed to telling stories from across the global African world, you can find her stories and poems in PRISM International, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. Eliamani teaches at Fordham University and serves as a fiction editor for Lampblack Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn where she is at work on her first novel.