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Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar (born January 15, 1989; Persian: کاوه اکبر) is an Iranian-American poet, novelist, and editor. He is the author of the poetry collections Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell and of the novel Martyr!, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.
Akbar is director of the University of Iowa's undergraduate creative writing program. He is the founder of Divedapper and Poetry Editor of The Nation. In 2018, NPR called him "poetry's biggest cheerleader". In 2024, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and Time magazine put him on its TIME100 Next List.
Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. His family emigrated to the United States when he was two years old, and he grew up in several states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana.
Akbar received his bachelor's degree from Purdue, his MFA from Butler University, and his PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.
Akbar received a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation, and in 2017, his chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Of it, the American poet Patricia Smith said: "Kaveh Akbar has written one of the best books of poetry I've ever read. Lyrical, seductive."
Akbar followed it months later with his full-length collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf, released to acclaim by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK. Kenyon Review called Akbar "a sumptuous, remarkably painterly poet", going on to say:
A number of poets over the years have made alcoholism a major subject—Franz Wright, with his lacerating lines, comes to mind, as does John Berryman and his theatrical derangements. But few have written about this exchange I'm describing—spirituality for spirits, and vice versa—with as much beauty or generosity as Kaveh Akbar. His debut collection is about addiction and its particularities but also touches something larger and harder to point to, to talk about—existential emptiness and the ways substances often offer respite from our spiritual hunger.
Calling a Wolf a Wolf was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and won Ploughshares's John C. Zacharis First Book Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University's Levis Reading Prize. It received a 2017 Julie Suk Award and a 2018 First Horizon Award, and was selected by NPR for its Book Concierge Guide to 2017's Great Reads. One of the poems, "Heritage", won the Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award in 2016.
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Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar (born January 15, 1989; Persian: کاوه اکبر) is an Iranian-American poet, novelist, and editor. He is the author of the poetry collections Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell and of the novel Martyr!, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist.
Akbar is director of the University of Iowa's undergraduate creative writing program. He is the founder of Divedapper and Poetry Editor of The Nation. In 2018, NPR called him "poetry's biggest cheerleader". In 2024, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and Time magazine put him on its TIME100 Next List.
Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. His family emigrated to the United States when he was two years old, and he grew up in several states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana.
Akbar received his bachelor's degree from Purdue, his MFA from Butler University, and his PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.
Akbar received a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation, and in 2017, his chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Of it, the American poet Patricia Smith said: "Kaveh Akbar has written one of the best books of poetry I've ever read. Lyrical, seductive."
Akbar followed it months later with his full-length collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf, released to acclaim by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK. Kenyon Review called Akbar "a sumptuous, remarkably painterly poet", going on to say:
A number of poets over the years have made alcoholism a major subject—Franz Wright, with his lacerating lines, comes to mind, as does John Berryman and his theatrical derangements. But few have written about this exchange I'm describing—spirituality for spirits, and vice versa—with as much beauty or generosity as Kaveh Akbar. His debut collection is about addiction and its particularities but also touches something larger and harder to point to, to talk about—existential emptiness and the ways substances often offer respite from our spiritual hunger.
Calling a Wolf a Wolf was shortlisted for the Forward Prizes's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and won Ploughshares's John C. Zacharis First Book Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University's Levis Reading Prize. It received a 2017 Julie Suk Award and a 2018 First Horizon Award, and was selected by NPR for its Book Concierge Guide to 2017's Great Reads. One of the poems, "Heritage", won the Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award in 2016.