Richard Prins

Richard Prins is a lifelong New Yorker. His poetry has been published in dozens of literary journals like Gulf Coast, jubilat and Ploughshares, and his creative nonfiction  has been selected to appear in The Best American Essays 2024. His translations of Swahili literature have been awarded a 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a 2024 National Endowment For the Arts Translation Fellowship.

He received his MFA degree in poetry from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and Adjunct Instructor of Creative Writing. Now he is finishing up a second MFA degree in literary translation at Queens College, where he teaches expository and creative writing.

Current translation projects include translations of the 19th century Swahili poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy (1776 - 1840), Katama Mkangi's Africanfuturist Swahili novel Walenisi, and a hybrid project about the anticolonial Hehe chieftain Mkwawa.

Current original projects include an ever-shifting poetry manuscript, a hybrid manuscript about the platypus, a travel memoir Bloody Mzungu, and a lyric exploration of the history of Swahili hip-hop.

He has taught creative writing to elementary, high school, and college students, as well as disabled adults, and collaborated on Swahili hip-hop tracks with Tanzanian artists, including members of L.W.P. Majitu and Daz Nundaz.

Other accomplishments include getting arrested for disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, obstructing traffic, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest in locales such as Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel, the Republican National Convention, and the United States Senate.