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Kaveh Akbar

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Kaveh Akbar (b. 15 January 1989; Persian: کاوه اکبر) is an Iranian American poet, novelist, and editor.[1][2] 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,[3] National Book Award finalist,[4] and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year.[5]

Kaveh Akbar
Akbar in 2024
Akbar in 2024
BornKaveh Akbar (کاوه اکبر)
(1989-01-15) 15 January 1989 (age 35)
Tehran, Iran
OccupationPoet, novelist, editor
NationalityIranian American
EducationPurdue, Butler University, Florida State University
Notable worksCalling a Wolf a Wolf, Martyr!
Notable awardsGuggenheim Fellowship, TIME100 Next 2024
SpousePaige Lewis
Website
kavehakbar.com

He is director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Iowa.[6] He is the founder of Divedapper and Poetry Editor of The Nation.[7] In 2018, NPR called him "poetry's biggest cheerleader".[8] In 2024, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship[9][10] and Time magazine put him on its TIME100 Next List.[11]

Early life and education

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Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. He moved to the United States when he was two years old,[12] and grew up across the United States including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana.[13]

Akbar received his bachelor's degree from Purdue, his MFA from Butler University,[14] and his PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.[15]

Works

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Poetry

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Akbar received a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation,[16][17] and in 2017, his poetry 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."[18]

Akbar followed it months later with his full-length collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf, released by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK to acclaim.[19][20] Kenyon Review called Akbar "a sumptuous, remarkably painterly poet,"[21] 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[22] and won Ploughshares's John C. Zacharis First Book Award[23] and the Virginia Commonwealth University's Levis Reading Prize.[24] It further 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.[25] One of the poems, "Heritage," won the Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award in 2016.[26]

Akbar's second full-length collection, Pilgrim Bell, was published in 2021 by Graywolf Press. It was named a best book of the year by Time,[27] The Guardian,[28] and NPR,[29] and was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.[30]

The Times Literary Supplement wrote about it: "The work here is a measured, quiet pondering of intense subjects and subjectivities. But it would be erroneous to mistake this for lack of force. Akbar is simply interrogating his life and his place in the world with greater stillness."[31] A Ploughshares essay called the book "songs of collective personhood—the way our hearts could fit in each other’s chests."[32] The New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young wrote that the collection's central poem "The Palace" "defamiliarizes language" and "recalls the epic mode, but also the ars poetica—the poem about making poetry."[33]

Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker,[34] The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Best American Poetry, The New Republic, Paris Review, PBS NewsHour,[35] Tin House, and elsewhere.[36]

Fiction

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Akbar's debut novel, Martyr!, was published in 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf.[37] It received critical acclaim, became a New York Times bestseller, was named one of the paper's Best Books of the Year So Far,[38] won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Award, and has been shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize.

The New Yorker applauded Martyr!: "Akbar’s writing has the musculature of poetry that can’t rely on narrative propulsion and so propels itself."[39] The Boston Globe wrote that it is "Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor."[40] Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Junot Diaz called it "incandescent" and its main character Cyrus Shams "an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic."[41]

At The New York Review of Books, Francine Prose noted:[42]

There’s something immensely appealing about a meticulously written novel whose characters (Cyrus isn’t the only one) are busily searching for meaning. It’s a pleasure to read a book in which an obsession with the metaphysical, the spiritual, and the ethical is neither a joke nor an occasion for a sermon. And it’s cheering to see a first-time (or anytime) novelist go for the heavy stuff—family, death, love, addiction, art, history, poetry, redemption, sex, friendship, US-Iranian relations, God—and manage to make it engrossing, imaginative, and funny.

In September 2024, Martyr! was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.[43][44]

Curation

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In 2014, Akbar founded the poetry interview website Divedapper, for contemporary poets to share their stories and writing.[35] In 2020, he was named Poetry Editor of The Nation, a position previously held by Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, and William Butler Yeats.

In 2022, Akbar edited The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine, released by Penguin Classics.[45] It collects poetry from many cultures, ancient and modern, ranging from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome; to the Arab, Farsi, Hindi, and Urdu worlds; as well as the rest of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Selected poets include Enheduanna, Mirabai, Lucretius, Dante, Nazim Hikmet, and Gabriela Mistral. Akbar provides notes on individual poems. In a Times Literary Supplement review, Rowan Williams described the book as "poetry that detaches us from the world of instant gratification," calling it "A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized."[46]

Film

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Akbar wrote poems, alongside Ocean Vuong, for the 2018 film The Kindergarten Teacher, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.[47]

Advocacy

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When the Donald Trump administration announced its Muslim ban in 2017, Akbar compiled verses by poets from the countries and asked his followers to read them. The compilation garnered media coverage.[48][49]

In October 2024, Akbar signed an open letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions alongside over 5500 other authors.[50][51]

Teaching

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Before moving to the University of Iowa, Akbar was associate professor of English at Purdue University.[52] He also teaches in the low-residency fine art programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson College.

Personal life

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Akbar is in recovery and has written about his struggles with addiction.[53] In an interview with The Paris Review, he cites poetry as helping with his sobriety, saying, "Early in recovery, it was as if I'd wake up and ask, How do I not accidentally kill myself for the next hour? And poetry, more often than not, was the answer to that."[54]

Akbar is married to the American poet Paige Lewis.[55][56]

Awards and honors

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Bibliography

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Fiction

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  • Martyr!. Knopf. 2024. ISBN 9780593537619. [58]

Poetry

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Collections
Anthologies edited
  • The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. Penguin Classics. 2023. ISBN 9780241391587.
  • Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance. Sarabande. 2023. ISBN 9780241391587.
List of poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
My Empire 2021 Akbar, Kaveh (April 5, 2021). "My Empire". The New Yorker. Vol. 97, no. 7. pp. 52–53.
The Palace 2019 Akbar, Kaveh (April 2019). "The Palace". The New Yorker.
Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler 2017 Akbar, Kaveh (October 2017). "Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler". The New York Times Magazine.
What Use is Knowing Anything if No One is Around 2017 Akbar, Kaveh (June 2017). "What Use is Knowing Anything if No One is Around". The New Yorker.
Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats 2016 Akbar, Kaveh (November 2016). "Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned into Threats". Poetry. Archived from the original on June 12, 2017.
Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus 2016 Akbar, Kaveh (October 2016). "Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus". Poetry. Archived from the original on June 12, 2017.
Palmyra 2015 Akbar, Kaveh (December 2015). "Palmyra". PBS NewsHour.

References

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  1. ^ Harris, Elizabeth A. (January 19, 2024). "What Drives Kaveh Akbar? The Responsibility of Survival". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 21, 2024.
  2. ^ "About Kaveh Akbar". Academy of American Poets.
  3. ^ "Matyr!". The Center for Fiction. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  4. ^ Harris, Elizabeth A. "Here Are the Finalists for the 2024 National Book Award". The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  5. ^ "Barack Obama Releases His Summer Reading List for 2024". Book Riot. August 13, 2024.
  6. ^ "Kaveh Akbar". The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  7. ^ Colegrove, Jessie (September 11, 2020). "Kaveh Akbar named poetry editor for The Nation | The English Department". english.fsu.edu.
  8. ^ Verma, Jeevika (January 14, 2018). "Kaveh Akbar Is Poetry's Biggest Cheerleader". NPR.
  9. ^ "2024 Guggenheim Fellows Announced". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  10. ^ "2 UI faculty receive prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship". Iowa Now. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  11. ^ Groff, Lauren (October 2, 2024). "Kaveh Akbar: TIME100 NEXT 2024". Time. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  12. ^ Akbar, Kaveh (September 12, 2017). "How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer". LitHub. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  13. ^ "Kaveh Akbar interview". Fields magazine. December 18, 2017. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  14. ^ "Kaveh Akbar MFA '15 Awarded Prestigious Poetry Fellowship – Stories".
  15. ^ Brouk, Story and photos by Tim. "Kaveh Akbar creates art with meter and phrase". Journal and Courier.
  16. ^ "2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Winners Announced". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  17. ^ "Butler Newsroom | Kaveh Akbar MFA '15 Awarded Prestigious Poetry Fellowship". Butler University. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  18. ^ Smith, Patricia. "@KavehAkbar has written one of the best books of poetry I've ever read--"Portrait of the Alcoholic." Touch, lyrical, seductive. Get it". Twitter. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  19. ^ "NPR's Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2017's Great Reads". NPR. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  20. ^ Schmank, Susie. "Purdue professor writes through alcohol addiction in poetry collection". IndyStar. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  21. ^ Voigt, Benjamin. "The Flower Behind God: On Kaveh Akbar's Calling a Wolf a Wolf". The Kenyon Review. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  22. ^ "Forward Prizes 2018 shortlist announced". National Poetry Library. May 24, 2018. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  23. ^ "Akbar Wins Ploughshares First Book Award". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  24. ^ McNeill, Brian. "Kaveh Akbar wins 21st annual Levis Reading Prize for 'Calling a Wolf a Wolf'". VCU News. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  25. ^ "Kaveh Akbar Awarded Levis Reading Prize". Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  26. ^ "Lucille Medwick Memorial Award - 2016". Poetry Society of America. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  27. ^ "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021: Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar". TIME. November 29, 2021. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  28. ^ "The best books of 2021, chosen by our guest authors". The Guardian. December 5, 2021. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  29. ^ "Books We Love: 2021". NPR. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  30. ^ "Forward Prizes for Poetry Shortlist 2022". The Poetry Society. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  31. ^ Barokka, Khairani. "Always elsewhere". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  32. ^ Wallace, Cynthia R. (August 25, 2021). "The Interfaith Poetics of Pilgrim Bell". Ploughshares. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  33. ^ Young, Kevin (April 19, 2019). "Throwing Weight Into Sound: Kaveh Akbar on Poetry and Power". The New Yorker. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  34. ^ Akbar, Kaveh (April 18, 2019). "The Palace". The New Yorker.
  35. ^ a b Harriet Staff (January 5, 2016). "Kaveh Akbar Reads "Palmyra" at PBS NewsHour". Poetry Foundation. Archived from the original on February 22, 2017. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  36. ^ "The Well Review: an arts journal springs up in Cork". The Irish Times. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  37. ^ "See the cover for Kaveh Akbar's novel Martyr!". May 11, 2023.
  38. ^ "The Best Books of the Year (So Far)". The New York Times. May 24, 2024. Retrieved June 25, 2024.
  39. ^ Waldman, Katy (March 13, 2024). ""Martyr!" Plays Its Subject for Laughs but Is Also Deadly Serious". The New Yorker. Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  40. ^ Smith, Wendy; January 18. "In Kaveh Akbar's 'Martyr!' a poet seeks faith amid the senselessness of death, and life - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved January 21, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  41. ^ Díaz, Junot (January 19, 2024). "A Death-Haunted First Novel Incandescent With Life". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 21, 2024.
  42. ^ Prose, Francine (April 18, 2024). "Poem & Prayer". The New York Review of Books. 71 (7). Retrieved June 23, 2024.
  43. ^ Harris, Elizabeth A. "Here Are the Finalists for the 2024 National Book Award". The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
  44. ^ "The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist". The New Yorker. September 12, 2024. Retrieved September 13, 2024.
  45. ^ "The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse". Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  46. ^ Williams, Rowan. "Beyond the damaged ego". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  47. ^ Alter, Alexandra (November 23, 2018). "Hollywood Has Long Turned to Novelists for Help. But Poets?". The New York Times.
  48. ^ Frank, Priscilla (January 30, 2017). "Read These Poems By Writers From Each of the Muslim Ban Countries". HuffPost. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  49. ^ "Read poems from the 7 countries affected by Trump's immigration ban". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  50. ^ Sheehan, Dan (October 28, 2024). "Thousands of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions". Literary Hub. Retrieved November 11, 2024.
  51. ^ Alter, Alexandra (October 28, 2024). "Authors Call for a Boycott of Israeli Cultural Institutions". New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2024.
  52. ^ "Kaveh Akbar - College of Liberal Arts - Purdue University". cla.purdue.edu.
  53. ^ Christian Arthur (April 6, 2017). "Kaveh Akbar Maps Unprecedented Experience in 'Portrait of the Alcoholic'". The Fix. Archived from the original on August 1, 2021. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  54. ^ "Poetry is Doing Great: An Interview with Kaveh Akbar". Paris Review. August 18, 2021. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  55. ^ Kosinski, George. ""Married to my favorite poet" W@G: Paige Lewis and Kaveh Akbar". The Scarlet & Black. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  56. ^ "Paige Lewis & Kaveh Akbar". the Elliott Bay Book Company. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  57. ^ a b "Kaveh Akbar's poem awarded a Pushcart Prize". Retrieved September 11, 2017 – via Facebook.
  58. ^ Harris, Elizabeth A. (January 19, 2024). "What Drives Kaveh Akbar? The Responsibility of Survival". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 12, 2024.
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