Khaled Mattawa

Khaled Mattawa studied at Indiana University, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Duke University. The recorded working language is Arabic and English. The field of work recorded is poetry, Arabic literature and translation from Arabic. Employment is recorded with University of Michigan and California State University, Northridge. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, MacArthur Fellows Program and Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets.

• Name — Khaled Mattawa • Born — 1964 • Birthplace — Benghazi, Libya • Occupation — Poet, translator, essayist • Period — 1995–present • Employer — University of Michigan • Genre — Poetry • Education — University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Indiana University Bloomington; Duke University • Notable Works — Ismalia Eclipse, The Zodiac of Echoes, Amorisco

Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, where he spent his childhood and early teens. In 1979, he emigrated to the United States. He lived in the south for many years, finishing high school in Louisiana at St. Paul's School and completing bachelor's degrees in political science and economics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He went on to earn an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing in 1994 from Indiana University Bloomington, where he taught creative writing. He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge. He received his PhD from Duke University in 2009. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Callaloo, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry East, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review and The Pushcart Prize XIX, The Best American Poetry 1997 anthologies. Khaled Mattawa began writing poetry in the late 1980s. His first collection of poems was published 1995. He then started working on translating Arabic poetry of renowned Arab poets into English, his first translation Questions and Their Retinue: Selected Poems of Iraqi poet Hatif Janabi was published in 1996. He contributed and edited two Anthologies on Arab American Literature. Mattawa is a contributing editor for Banipal magazine, the leading independent magazine of contemporary Arab literature translated into English. He was president of Radius of Arab American Writers organization RAWI. In 2014, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, he was a contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue between East and West, edited by Bill Swainson.

• Tocqueville New Issues, 2010 • Amorisco Ausable Press, 2008, * • Ismailia Eclipse The Sheep Meadow Press, 1995, • Contributor to The New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West

• Adonis: Selected Poems (The Margellos World Republic of Letters), Yale 2010, (shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize) • Amjad Nasser, (2009). Shepherd of solitude: selected poems, 1979-2004, Banipal Books, • Joumana Haddad, (2008). Invitation to a Secret Feast, Tupelo Press, • Iman Mirsal, (2008). These are not oranges, my love: selected poems, Sheep Meadow Press, • Maram Al-Massri, (2004). A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor: Selected Poems by Bloodaxe Books, United Kingdom, 2004; Copper Canyon Press, United States, 2007 * • Saadi Youssef, (2002). Without An Alphabet, Without A Face: Selected Poems Graywolf Press, • Fadhil Al Azzawi, (1997). In Every Well A Joseph Is Weeping, poems of Quarterly Review of Books *

• How Long Have You Been With Us?: Essays on Poetry. (University of Michigan Press, 2016).