Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, Ca. She is the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Emerita and the 2025 Ohio Poet of the Year. Kamara's debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), was the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and is the winner of the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry. Kamara earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University.