He is associate professor of literatures in English at Cornell University and co-founder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Writing.

Mũkoma was born in 1971 in Evanston, Illinois, US, but raised in Kenya, before returning to the United States for his university education.

[1] He has published poems in Tin House Magazine, Chimurenga, Brick magazine, Smartish Pace, and Teeth in the Wind, One Hundred Days (Barque Press); New Black Writing (John Wiley and Sons); Réflexions sur le Génocide rwandais/Ten Years Later: Reflections on the Rwandan Genocide (L'Harmattan).

In addition, he has published political essays and columns in the LA Times, Radical History Review, World Literature Today, Mail and Guardian, Zimbabwe’s Herald, Kenya’s Daily Nation, The EastAfrican, Kwani?

[9] Mũkoma stated that with Queen Elizabeth II’s death, there needs to be a “dismantling” of the Commonwealth and a real reckoning with colonial abuses.