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“In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our attention.” — NPR

“An innovative and galvanizing poet.” — Adrian Matejka, Pulitzer Prize Finalist

“A writer who moves gracefully between liberal arts and martial arts.” — The Washington Post

“I was inspired.” — Ken Shamrock, UFC Legend

“Caged shows us how something many consider brutal can actually be a vehicle for achieving purpose and a better understanding of ourselves.” — Jim Arvanitis, Black Belt Magazine’s Instructor of the Year

“One of the best professors I’ve had across several universities.” — Rate My Professors Review

“At a convention where you could get lost in PowerPoint presentations on the molecular structure of malaria drug candidates, Conaway’s poems were a reminder of why all this science matters.” — NPR

“This was the best class I have ever taken in the Master’s degree program.” — Rate My Professors Review

“I couldn’t stop reading. Conaway’s writing style is as captivating as his story. He takes you inside the heart, mind and soul of a fighter. He is the voice for all fighters…” — Glen Cordoza, BJJ Black Belt and NYT Best Selling Author

“Cameron Conaway’s fierce, fearless memoir offers a clear-eyed look at a brutal childhood, an angry father, and a son’s gathering demons. In the end, though, the author carves his way forward through an unlikely combination of mixed martial arts, poetry, and human connection. This book never fails to surprise, and along the way Conaway gives voice and hope to all young men who must learn to grow up and out of their fathers’ footsteps or risk falling into the same hole.” — Dinty W. Moore, Board Member, Creative Nonfiction Magazine

“In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our attention.” — NPR

“An innovative and galvanizing poet.” — Adrian Matejka, Pulitzer Prize Finalist

“A writer who moves gracefully between liberal arts and martial arts.” — The Washington Post

“I was inspired.” — Ken Shamrock, UFC Legend

“One of the best professors I’ve had across several universities.” — Rate My Professors Review

“This was the best class I have ever taken in the Master’s degree program.” — Rate My Professors Review

Malaria, Poems

“When a collection like Malaria, Poems comes along, the world must take notice. In the spirit of social consciousness, Cameron Conaway does the work of calling our attention to a disease that kills over 627,000 people a year. Call it the poetry of awareness: Through beautifully realized and scientifically sound lyrics, Conaway educates us on subjects ranging from the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits the disease, to the gray market in false remedies. The work, while deeply cerebral, manages to get to the heart of the issue with intense power.” — NPR, Best Books of 2014

Purchase from Michigan State University Press

Chittagong

Chittagong is a book of poems and essays that focuses on the shipbreaking industry in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Shipbreaking is the dismantling of decommissioned ships, and the industry is known for its pollution and child labor violations. Chittagong pushes genre boundaries as it explores the “whirling and whirring dust of togetherness” in Bangladesh’s second largest city.

“Conaway draws attention to the despicable and unsafe working conditions in the [shipbreaking] industry… [the work] revolves around encapsulating toxicity in language and capturing the personhood of laborers, as a way to challenge what global capitalism carefully conceals.” — South Asian Review, 2024

Purchase from Iris Press

Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet

“I was inspired.” — Ken Shamrock, UFC Hall of Famer

“Conaway is the first-person narrator of this memoir, who wears his heart on his boxing gloves. He’s not sly or conniving in any way. He’s transparent and sincere, vulnerable and open. He’s honest and confessional… One of Caged’s strengths is how it’s not just about MMA. At its core, it’s a reflection of a young man’s coming of age without his father, and how he relied on other men—his step-father, his coaches, and celebrity fighters—to guide him through his adolescence. It’s a memoir emphasizing the importance of the mind and body balance, as seen through Conaway’s obsessive need to give equal weight to his intellectual life and his physical life. As the sub-title suggests, it’s a meditation on being literally and metaphorically caged in one’s life and finding ways to break out.” — Full Review at DIAGRAM

Purchase from your local bookstore

Until You Make the Shore

“For those who fear poetry, namely for its potential lack of coherency, narrative, or obvious purpose, here is an entry point. Each realism-burning tale is an urn painted in succinct, sonnet- like revelatory turns.” — Ottawa Arts Review

“A brilliant and deeply moving debut… the book’s unflinching gaze ultimately is about mercy and forgiveness.” — Todd Davis

“These unforgettable stories in this untraditional telling will remain with the reader forever.” — Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Purchase from Salmon Poetry

Man Box

“Man Box can open up important conversations in gender studies classes everywhere.” — Dr. Joe Boehman, Dean of Richmond College, University of Richmond

“In this exquisite collection, Conaway breaks the manacles of manhood by bravely disrupting its ‘lexicon of destruction.’ In dialogue with texts that range from ancient to popular culture, his poems explore the myriad ways that boys are ‘the first victims / and the second perpetrators …broken to see / the world as theirs but not / until they murder it.’ If ever a book of poetry had the promise to make a vital impact on our contemporary culture, it is Man Box.” — Christina Cook, author of Ricochet and A Strange Insomnia

Purchase on Amazon

Select Journalism

In addition to these books, here’s a small sample of Cameron’s journalism which has been supported by organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Fellowship from Moment Magazine.

Newsweek

The Ganges River Crisis

“No river is as cared for and in need of caring. No river’s mythology is as intertwined into its hydrology. No river is as preserved by old stories and as desperate for new stories. The Ganges is often talked about in the context of its juxtapositions—of deification and defecation, of the solemn and the fantastic, of prayers and pathogens—and since time immemorial it has held these as well as it holds scenic row boats at dawn. But the Ganges is suffering perhaps more than ever. Long considered one of the world’s most polluted waterways, many reports indicate that the situation is getting worse. Can it be rejuvenated in ways that at once heal the environment, maintain cultural traditions and support the millions of people who are linked to and reliant upon it for life?”

Read at Newsweek

Moment Magazine

Shadows in the Golden Land

“For more than four years, Azid and his wife, children and grandchildren have been imprisoned in a government-designated, internally displaced persons camp on the outskirts of the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe in western Myanmar. They have not committed a crime, but they are not allowed to leave. Ohn Taw Gyi South, located along the Bay of Bengal, is one of at least 80 such camps across the state, which together hold about 140,000 people. Labeled concentration camps by groups and individuals ranging from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to The New York Times to Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, they are jammed with Muslims: former students, shop owners and employees, mechanics, fishermen, caretakers, teachers, food vendors—and thousands and thousands of children.”

Read at Moment Magazine

What Story Are You Living Right Now?

Tap 6 qualities to fill the pages

“Reading the stories of others can strike sparks that help us live our own.”

— Cameron Conaway