Threa Almontaser

Last updated
Threa Almontaser
OccupationAuthor
Education North Carolina State University
Notable worksThe Wild Fox of Yemen
Notable awards Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets (2020)
Website
Almontaser's website

Threa Almontaser is the award-winning author of The Wild Fox of Yemen, nominated for the National Book Award, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, and the Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Her debut has received widespread national recognition, including the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, and the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.

Contents

Early life and education

Threa Almontaser learned English in elementary school and began writing short stories and poems at a very young age, primarily in the form of scribbles that she read out loud to her family. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing and her TESOL certification from North Carolina State University. [1]

Career

Almontaser's debut poetry collection, The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press), was selected by Harryette Mullen as winner of the 2020 Walt Whitman Award established by the Academy of American Poets. [2] [3]

Almontaser has been published for the Pushcart Prize, Best of The Net, and the Best New Poets series. She is a recipient of the Unsilenced Grant for Muslim American Women Writers, and has received support from Duke, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Program. Along with writing books, Almontaser also teaches English to immigrants and refugees in her area. [2] [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Glück</span> American poet and Nobel laureate (1943–2023)

Louise Elisabeth Glück was an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Dove</span> American poet and author (born 1952)

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alicia Ostriker</span> American poet and scholar (born 1937)

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon Olds</span> American poet

Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach activities such as National Poetry Month, its website Poets.org, the syndicated series Poem-a-Day, American Poets magazine, readings and events, and poetry resources for K-12 educators. In addition, it sponsors a portfolio of nine major poetry awards, of which the first was a fellowship created in 1946 to support a poet and honor "distinguished achievement," and more than 200 prizes for student poets.

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings is an American poet, translator, and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracy K. Smith</span> American poet

Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joy Harjo</span> American Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniela Gioseffi</span> American writer

Daniela Gioseffi is a poet, novelist and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present. She has published 16 books of poetry and prose and won a PEN American Center's Short Fiction prize (1995), and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry (2007).

Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory Pardlo</span> American poet, writer, and professor (born 1968)

Gregory Pardlo is an American poet, writer, and professor. His book Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Poet Lore, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and on National Public Radio. His work has been praised for its “language simultaneously urban and highbrow… snapshots of a life that is so specific it becomes universal.”

Ian Williams is a Canadian poet and fiction writer. His collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and his debut novel, Reproduction, was awarded the 2019 Giller Prize. His work has ben shortlisted for various awards, as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Coste Lewis</span> American poet

Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet, artist, and scholar. She is known primarily for her debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation's history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. Critics called the collection “A masterpiece…” “Surpassing imagination, maturity, and aesthetic dazzle…” “remarkable hopefulness…in the face of what would make most rage and/or collapse...” “formally polished, emotionally raw, and wholly exquisite." Voyage of the Sable Venus was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award, and the California Book Award. The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzz Feed, and Entropy Magazine all named Voyage one of the best poetry collections of the year. Flavorwire named the collection one of the 10 must-read books about art. And Literary Hub named Voyage one of the “Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years.” In 2018, MoMA commissioned both Lewis and Kevin Young to write a series of poems to accompany Robert Rauschenberg’s drawings in the book "Thirty-Four Illustrations of Dante’s Inferno". Lewis is also the author of "Inhabitants and Visitors," a chapbook published by Clockshop and the Huntington Library and Museum. Her next book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, was published by Knopf in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mai Der Vang</span> American poet

Mai Der Vang is a Hmong American poet.

Emily Skaja is an American poet. She is the author of Brute, winner of the Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenny Xie</span> American poet and educator

Jenny Xie is an American poet and educator. She is the author of Eye Level, winner of the 2018 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018, and of The Rupture Tense, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022.

Leah Naomi Green is an American poet and creative non-fiction essayist. She is the author of The More Extravagant Feast, winner of the Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets in 2019. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Washington and Lee University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Parsons</span> American author, poet, and educator

David Mercier Parsons was born on April 16, 1943, in Villa Rica, Georgia, and is an American author, poet, and educator. Raised in Austin, Texas, he was named by the Texas State Legislature in 2011 to a one-year term as Poet Laureate of Texas, commemorated by the publication of David M. Parsons New & Selected Poems by the Texas Christian University Press. His most recent book is the poetry collection Reaching for Longer Water. Parsons holds a BBA from Texas State University and an MA from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program where he studied poetry and literature with Edward Hirsch, Stanley Plumly, Richard Howard, Robert Pinsky and Howard Moss.

Major poetry related events which took place worldwide during 2019 are outlined below under different sections. This includes poetry books released during the year in different languages, major literary awards, poetry festivals and events, besides anniversaries and deaths of renowned poets etc. Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

References

  1. "Threa Almontaser". Poets.org. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
  2. 1 2 "NC State English Alumna Wins 2020 Walt Whitman Award". College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 2020-04-23. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  3. "The Arab Weekly". Yemeni-American poet Threa Almontaser wins Walt Whitman Award. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
  4. "Threa Almontaser". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2023-08-09.