Tongo Eisen-Martin on Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Healers
In Conversation with Michael Kelleher for the Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present Windham-Campbell Prize winners about their favorite books and plays. Hosted by Michael Kelleher.
To kick off the new season of The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast, host and prize director Michael Kelleher is joined by Tongo Eisen-Martin, recipient of a 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry, to discuss Ayi Kwei Armah’s 1979 novel The Healers.
Tongo Eisen-Martin was San Francisco’s eighth Poet Laureate (2021-2024). He is the author of three collections of poetry: Blood on the Fog (2021), selected by the New York Times as among the Best Poetry of 2021; Heaven is All Goodbyes (2017); and Someone’s Dead Already (2015). He has taught creative writing in prisons and is the author of We Charge Genocide Again, a series of lessons plans to support students and teachers in grappling with the state-sanctioned killing of Black people. A recipient of several awards including the American Book Award (2018), a California Book Award (2018), and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award (2018), Eisen-Martin earned both his BA and MA from Columbia University.
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast is a program of The Windham-Campbell Prizes, which are administered by Yale University Library’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
