Syl Cheney-Coker is a poet based in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa. He has published many collections and in 1991 received the Commonwealth Writers Prize for outstanding English-language-fiction African Region, and the Ford Foundation grant. He has been a journalist, head of cultural affairs for Radio Sierra Leone, and a freelance poet and writer. His collections include Concerto for an Exile: Poems, The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, The Blood is the Deserts Eyes, and The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar. His work focuses primarily on the brutal life in Sierra Leone, whose independence was shattered during a civil war which he witnessed in his early adult life. He has spent the majority of his career in exile, as Sierra Leone’s struggles have lasted almost as long as his writing career. He left the country during the unrest and studied at the University of Oregon, University of California, and the University of Wisconsin throughout the 1970s.
Information from encyclopedia.com.
