Kaveh Akbar: 'The Word Dropped Like a Stone: Echoes of the Ancients'

Kaveh Akbar’s first novel “Martyr!” was a New York Times Bestseller, the 2024 recipient of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize for Fiction, a 2024 Discover Prize Finalist and a 2024 National Book Award Finalist.

Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: “Pilgrim Bell” and “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” in addition to a chapbook, “Portrait of the Alcoholic.” He is also the editor of “The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine.”

In 2020 Akbar was named poetry editor of The Nation. The recipient of multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship and the Levis Reading Prize, Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, he founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry.

This event is part of Augustana College's Symposium Day.