Afaa Michael Weaver is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He has received prizes for poetry and playwriting, including two Pushcarts, Pew and NEA fellowships, and the PDI Award in playwriting. His twelfth collection of poetry, The Government of Nature, was published by the University of Pittsburgh press in early 2013. He holds an endowed chair at Simmons College as the Alumnae Professor of English, and is Director of the Zora Neale Hurston Center and Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference.