Jamila Osman is a Somali writer, educator, and community organizer. She has taught creative writing from Portland to Palestine, from summer camps to juvenile detention facilities, and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She received the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the 2021 Black Warrior Review’s Flash Contest award, and The Bellingham Review’s 2022 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. She is the author of the poetry chapbook A Girl is a Sovereign State (Akashic 2020).
Jamila has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, and Caldera. Some of her poems and essays can be found in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Catapult, Diagram, and in several anthologies including A Map is Only One Story: 20 Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home and The Best of Brevity: 20 Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction. She is the nonfiction editor of Brink Literary Magazine. She has performed at readings and literary events around the world, including the Palestine Writes Literature Festival and The Lagos International Poetry Festival. She regularly presents at colleges and conferences on the intersection of art, culture, and activism.
She is currently working on a memoir and a full-length poetry collection. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she is a restorative justice trainer and equity informed mediator.
