Kwame Senu Neville Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 but grew up in Jamaica where he attended Jamaica College and the University of the West Indies at Mona.  He studied and taught in New Brunswick on a Commonwealth Scholarship to Canada .  Since 1992 he has been teaching at the University of South Carolina .  He is Professor of English on the Columbia campus of that institution.

His critical articles on literature, theater and film have been published widely.  He is an actor playwright and producer, an accomplished storyteller, broadcaster and was the lead singer in Ujamaa, a reggae band.  To date, Kwame Dawes has seen produced fifteen of his plays and he has acted in, directed or produced several of these productions. His major works which have had successful runs in Jamaica and tours in the Caribbean and in Canada include Friends and Almost Lovers, Brown Leaf, Charades, Even Unto Death, Charity's Come, In Chains of Freedom, In the Warmth of the Cold, Dear Pastor and Song of an Injured Stone.  During the early 1980s Dawes was the founder and artistic director of the Christian Graduate Theatre Company.  Productions of his plays have won several theatre awards in Jamaica . His new play, One Love, inspired by the novel Brother Man by Roger Mais, opened at the Bristol Old Vic in the UK in April 2001 under the direction of Yvonne Brewster. One Love completed a successful run at the Lyric Hammersmith in London in July 2001. The play has been published by Methuen Books (UK 2001).  His play Stump of the Terebinth was the winner of Trinidad and Tobago 's National Schools Festival in 2001.  The play was staged by St. Joseph 's High School in Trinidad and directed by Roshini Twarie.  Stump toured with the St. Louis Black Repertory Theater Company under the direction of Artistic Director Ron Hinds in 2002.

In 2002 Dawes published three new titles, A Place Hide and Other Stories (Peepal Tree Books), Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (Sanctuary Publishing) and New and Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Books). Dawes has published eight other collections of poetry, Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree 1994--Winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, UK)  Resisting the Anomie (Goose Lane 1995), Prophets (Peepal Tree 1995). Jacko Jacobus, (Peepal Tree 1996), Requiem, (Peepal Tree 1996) a suite of poems inspired by the illustrations of African American artist, Tom Feelings in his landmark book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo, and Shook Foil (Peepal Tree 1998) a collection of reggae-inspired poems. His most recent collection, Midland , was awarded the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize by the Ohio University Press (2001). The judge for the contest was Eavan Boland. In 2001, Dawes was a winner of the Push Cart Prize for the best American poetry of 2001. In 2000, Dawes published several titles including a book of interviews with contemporary West Indian poets, Talk Yuh Talk: Interviews with Caribbean Poets (University of Virginia Press 2000). Mapmaker, a chapbook of poems by Dawes was recently winner of the Poetry Business Contest in the UK and appeared in May 2000 under the Smith/Doorstop imprint. Dawes has also edited an anthology of reggae poetry, Wheel and Come Again, which was published by Peepal Tree Books in the UK and Goose Lane Editions in Canada in 1998. Dawes is also author of a critical examination of reggae music and literature Natural Mysticism: Towards a Reggae Aesthetic (Peepal Tree 1999).  He also guest-edited a special issue of Obsidian III called Catch A Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Jamaican Writing in 2001.  It represents a ground-breaking work in Post-Colonial studies.

In 2003, Kwame Dawes was judge of the National Book Awards.  He has since judged numerous prices in the US , Jamaica and the UK including his role as a juror for the prestigious Neustadt International Prize in 2005.  In 2004, Dawes began his three year stint as a cave Canem faculty member.  He has since worked closely with the organization in the support and promotion of African American poetry in the US .  In 2005, Dawes edited Twenty South Carolina Poetry Fellows, an anthology of South Carolina poetry.  
2007 has seen the publication of three important titles by Kwame Dawes including the personal narrative A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock (an excerpt of which appeared in Granta), Impossible Flying, a collection of poems, and Wisteria, a collection of poems published by Red Hen Press.  In 2007, Akashic Books released his novel, She's Gone as well as his collection of poems, Gomer's Song under its Black Goat imprint.  Dawes continues to be a much sought after reader of his work and a teacher of writing. His lectures on the art of Bob Marley have made him an important feature on the reading and lecture circuit throughout the US . He remains one of the most respected authorities on the lyrics and art of Bob Marley and on the reggae aesthetic.  His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (Sanctuary Books, 2004) remains the singular and most comprehensive study of the lyrics of Bob Marley to date.

Dawes' critical essays on Caribbean Literature, African Literature and issues of race and identity have appeared in such publications as Ariel, World Literature Today, Essence Magazine, Emerge Magazine, Poetry Review, World Press Review, Critical Quarterly, West Coast, The Washington Post, London Review of Books, the Journal of West Indian Literature, African American Review, Fuse, African Affairs: The Royal Society of African Studies, DoubleTake Magazine, The Atlanta Review, The Mississippi Review, Wasafiri,  The Caribbean Writer, Calalloo, Critique and the Journal of Caribbean Literatures.  He has appeared regularly on radio and television in the Caribbean, the United Kingdom , Canada , Sweden and the United States .   In December of 1997, a full-page feature of Dawes appeared in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution which gave attention to Dawes' work as a poet and as a researcher into the lives of African Americans in Sumter , SC.

Dawes has performed and read from his work in Europe, the Caribbean and North America for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.  His research into folk life in the South, the Caribbean and Africa has provided him with fodder for his poetry and his storytelling.  He is also doing a greet deal of research into post-colonial literature and theory and writing from Africa and the African Diaspora.  Dawes has received several awards for his writing including a recent Individual Artist Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission and a Pushcart Prize for his poetry (2001).

In 1987 Dawes was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Iowa 's writing program.  In 1997 he was appointed as an Associate Fellow of the University of Warwick .   Dawes is now editing a special series of Caribbean plays for Peepal Tree Books.  The first of the series will be released in late 2006. Kwame Dawes, former director of the MFA program at the University of South Carolina , is founder and director of the USC Poetry Initiative.  In 2005 he was appointed the Executive Director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute.  Dawes is the programmer for the Calabash International Literary Festival held in St. Elizabeth , Jamaica , each year.  Dawes is a Louise Frye Liberal Arts Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Distinguished Poet in Residence at USC.