Biography
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, 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.