Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems; When the Wanderers Come Home; Where the Road Turns; and Becoming Ebony. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Transition, New York Times Magazine, Harvard Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and her work has been translated into several languages. She immigrated to the United States in 1991 with her...See more

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems; When the Wanderers Come Home; Where the Road Turns; and Becoming Ebony. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Transition, New York Times Magazine, Harvard Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and her work has been translated into several languages. She immigrated to the United States in 1991 with her husband and children after surviving two years of the fourteen-year series of Liberian civil wars. Her awards include the 2022 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize for Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, a 2022 Levinson Prize from Poetry Foundation, a 2022 Edward Stanley Poetry Prize for her poem, "My Name is Dawanyeno," a 2002 Crab Orchard Award, among others. Her newest book, Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry, the first comprehensive body of literature from Liberia since that nation's independence in 1847, was released from the University of Nebraska Press in January 2023. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State Altoona. See less