Hands in Clay
Serving House Books, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025
Praise for Hands in Clay
Passing effortlessly through the thin membrane that separates the real from the fantastical, Mildred Kiconco Barya’s Hands in Clay takes the reader on a spectacular journey. The speaker in these poems is simultaneously wide-eyed and knowing, “an infant/yet full of years,” and like the woman seated beside the speaker of “The Things You Encounter on a Flight,” marveling at the sunset Barya has nudged her into seeing, the reader will want to reach out to figuratively hold the hand of the creator of these fine poems.
–Christopher Kennedy, The Strange God Who Makes Us
To order copies: BOOKSHOP / BARNES & NOBLE / AMAZON
The Animals of My Earth School
Terrapin Books, 2023
Praise for The Animals of My Earth School
In the compassionate, playful, fable-like poems of The Animals of My Earth School, Mildred Kiconco Barya awakens us to the vividly singing, fully alive, non-human communities surrounding us. These poems demonstrate poetry’s unique ability to prick us from our self-involved numbness and awaken us to wonder. There is great solace, tenderness, and innocence here—the kind of innocence capable of apprehending the creatures of the world—and thus the world itself—afresh. Like a literary Noah’s ark of song, The Animals of My Earth School provides a place where all may dance and thrive. These poems provide pleasure and a glimmer of hope.
—Michael Hettich, The Mica Mine
Available at
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Give Me Room to Move My Feet
Amalion Publishing
Praise for Give Me Room to Move My Feet
Each generation sees itself as transitional, ‘skipped’, but each has its role to play–as the poet has her dharma. The poet in Give Me Room to Move My Feet uses the grounding by grandma to help her go deeper, higher and wider. In dialectical ‘opposition’ lines and dialogue, Barya delves into the contradictions about love, loss, and betrayal–by the selfish who took advantage of idealists and by the lover who after goading us on preferred to be somewhere else. In deeply personal explorations, the poet breaks down and mends herself through spirituality, religion, and poetry, bringing back to life what seemed to be dead.
—Peter Nazareth, In the Trickster Tradition
The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami
Mallory Publishing
Praise for The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami 
The poems in vivid imagery uncover what happens when the pleasurable thrill of being alive is lost in the pain that settles among the familiar and refuses to say goodbye… The subject of memory, remembrance and forgetfulness resound throughout the collection, from the nostalgic experiences in ‘Wastelands’, ‘The Island’, to the collective ‘Africa re-disappointed’, Borderless Africa’, and ‘Child of the Universe’. In this moving poetry collection, we witness what comes out of keeping dreams in trouser pockets ridden with holes. When we send the eye to look into the future, with shock we discover that the future already came.
Available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble
Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say
New Vision Publications 
Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say, Mildred Kiconco Barya’s first poetry collection, won the Uganda National Award for poetry publication in 2002. The 75 poems are divided into four sections: “Poems of Challenge”; “Poems of Sunshine and Loneliness”; “Poems of Loss and Contradiction”; and “Poems of Release”. The title poem is a humorous contemplation on the dual-natured personality of man–on the one hand, the masculine identity he presents to his friends; and on the other, his softer side which endears him to women.
Available via Amazon
Some of Mildred K Barya’s fiction is published in various anthologies and journals such as Northeast Review, Per Contra, New Daughters of Africa Anthology (HarperCollins Publishers), The African Love Stories Anthology (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, UK), Dreams, Miracles & Jazz (Picador, Africa), Gifts of Harvest (FEMRITE) Commonwealth Broadcasting Association UK, and Words From A Granary Anthology ( FEMRITE).
Words from a Granary
Violet Barungi, Editor. From the publisher’s description: Words from a Granary is the second anthology of short stories by Ugandan women to be published by the Ugandan Women Writers’ Association, Femrite. It is the outcome of a three-year programme of workshops geared towards equipping creative women writers in a difficult social and intellectual environment. ‘Granary’, a symbol of hope in face of despair in the traditional Ugandan homestead, is synonymous with promise for these female writers and publishers, and thus the elected title of the collection. The workshops called for stories from which fifteen were selected for this anthology. New writers are strongly represented and there are also contributions from established writers. The stories tell different tales and capture different experiences of aspects of contemporary Ugandan life, providing a variety of insights into people’s lives and concerns.
Gifts of Harvest
Violet Barungi, Editor. From the publisher’s description: Often it is the tragedies that befall us that bring out the best in us in terms of creative talent. This is reflected in this short-story anthology. From the origins of life – and its antithesis, death – through tradition as opposed to modernity, through depredations and ravages of war, HIV/Aids, marital infidelity, school experiences, to the importance of resilience, this anthology traverses a broad literary territory both in terms of themes and styles. Here you will find the voices of women from different parts of Uganda joined together by a commonality of concerns. Some of the twelve works published in this anthology have won prestigious literary awards and prizes in their individual capacities or have made it to the shortlist, making this collection the best of the best. The patience, sensitivity for detail, and total absence of melodrama even in the most tragic of pieces, signal a watershed in Uganda’s literature and give the reader a glimpse of greater things to come.
Dreams, Miracles and Jazz
Helon Habila & Kadija Sesay, Editors. From the publisher’s description: Dreams, Miracles and Jazz is an anthology of new writing in English from writers born in Africa or of African parentage. Stories from emerging voices including previous Caine prize winners, Binyavanga Wainana, Segun Afolabli and Brian Chikwava; writers who have since secured book deals, like Sefi Atta, and others whose work has won awards and is found regularly in national and international anthologies such as Biram Mboob and Mamle Kabu. The anthology is diverse thematically, covering almost all the major contemporary African issues such as AIDS, migration (both within and outside of the continent), land issues and identity. There is the tragic as well as the comic, but what runs through them all is the writers’ love and optimism for their continent, their belief in its future. Here are stories from Africa’s emerging international voices, telling stories in both traditional and new ways, paying homage to those who have gone before, yet forging ahead along their own dynamic new paths of storytelling. Good storytelling to be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates good fiction and wonderful writing.
The Social Sciences and Africa’s Future
Knowledge Rajohane Matshedisho, Claude Abe, Mildred Kiconco Barya, Esther Van Heerden, Ingrid Palmary.
Poems:
- Wordplay Radio Show poems & conversation, Asheville FM 103.3 2019.
- Factors and The Fire People, Poets.org, 2018
- Shuddering Expansion/Where home is, Asymptote Journal, 2018
- Locusts Tiferet Journal, 2018
- The heart, the heart, the hunger, Lady/Liberty/Lit Journal, 2018
- Ergonomics in Truck, 2016.
- Ode to the Sheep Prairie Schooner, 2016.
- Two poems, “The City of Antelope” and “Piano Lessons” in Capitals:Poetry Anthology on Capital Cities of the World, ed. Abhay K. Forthcoming.
- “The fire people” Poetry Quarterly, 2015.
- “Seen City” and “Unseen City” in Kampala Poetry Anthology, BN Publication, 2015.
- “Three poems” in Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, ed. Jane Plastow, Vol 14, (2014) School of English, University of Leeds, p90-91.
- Stormy Heart in A Thousand Voices Rising: An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, ed. Beverley N Nsengiyunva, Gilgal Media Arts, Kampala, (2014) p13-14.
- “Resolution” in Feminist Challenges in the Information Age, ed. Christiane Floyd, et al. Leske + Budrich, Opladen, 2002.
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Editor: Boda Boda Anthem and Other poems–Kampala Poetry Anthology published by Babishai Niwe, Uganda 2015.
