Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar
Akbar in 2016
Born	Kaveh Akbar (کاوه اکبر) (1989-01-15) 15 January 1989 Tehran, Iran
Occupation	Poet, novelist, editor
Nationality	Iranian American
Education	Purdue, Butler University, Florida State University
Notable works	Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Martyr!
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellowship
Spouse	Paige Lewis
Website
kavehakbar.com

Kaveh Akbar (کاوه اکبر) is an Iranian American poet, novelist, and editor. He is the author of the poetry collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf and of the novel Martyr!, a New York Times bestseller.

He is director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Iowa. He is Poetry Editor of The Nation. In 2018, NPR called him "poetry's biggest cheerleader". In 2024, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Early life and education

Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. He moved to the United States when he was two years old, and grew up across the United 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.

Works

Poetry

Akbar received a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation, 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."

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. 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 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. One of the poems, "Heritage," won the Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award in 2016.

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, The Guardian, and NPR, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "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." A Ploughshares essay called the book "songs of collective personhood—the way our hearts could fit in each other’s chests." 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."

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

Fiction

Akbar's debut novel, Martyr!, was published in 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf. It received critical acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller.

The New Yorker applauded it: "Akbar’s writing has the musculature of poetry that can’t rely on narrative propulsion and so propels itself." The Boston Globe wrote that it is "Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor." 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."

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

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.

Film

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

Curation and advocacy

In 2014, Akbar founded the poetry interview website Divedapper, for contemporary poets to share their stories and writing. 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. 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."

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.

Teaching

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

Personal life

Akbar is in recovery and has written about his struggles with addiction. 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."

Akbar is married to the American poet Paige Lewis.

Awards and honors

• 2024: Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2022: Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection for Pilgrim Bell
• 2021: Book of the Year selection by NPR, Time, and The Guardian for Pilgrim Bell
• 2021: Ploughshares's John C. Zacharis First Book Award for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2021: Virginia Commonwealth University's Levis Reading Prize for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2018: Shortlisted for the Forward Prizes's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2018: First Horizon Award for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2018: Pushcart Prize
• 2017: Julie Suk Award for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2017: NPR's Great Reads for Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• 2017: Pushcart Prize
• 2016: Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award for "Heritage"
• 2016: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship

Bibliography

Fiction

• Martyr!. Knopf. 2024. ISBN 9780593537619.

Poetry

Collections

• Pilgrim Bell. Graywolf Press. 2021. ISBN 978-1-64445-059-8.
• Calling a Wolf a Wolf. Alice James Books. 2017. ISBN 978-1938584671.
• Portrait of the Alcoholic. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2017. ISBN 978-1943977277.

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. 97 (7): 52–53.
The Palace	2019	Akbar, Kaveh (April, 2019). "The Palace". The New Yorker. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Palmyra	2015	Akbar, Kaveh (December, 2015). "Palmyra". PBS NewsHour. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• Personal Webpage
• Divedapper
• Kaveh Akbar: Profile and Poems at Poets.org