Kaveh Akbar MFA ’15 is one of five recipients of the 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, a $25,800 prize intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. The fellowships are available to all U.S. poets 21 to 31 years old.

“Poets aren’t just makers, they are doers,” said Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine. “Each one of the 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows excels at both of these things. They have all already had a salutary influence on American poetry, and it’s an honor for us to support their distinctive and essential efforts in an art form that is reaching more people than ever before.”

Akbar is the founder and editor of Divedapper, a home for interviews with the most vital voices in contemporary poetry. His poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Guernica, PBS NewsHour, Boston Review, and elsewhere. Alice James Books will publish Akbar’s debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in November 2017 and Sibling Rivalry Press will publish his chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, in January 2017.

Akbar founded and cohosts the monthly poetry podcast All Up in Your Ears with Gabrielle Calvocoressi, francine j. harris, and Jonathan Farmer. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida.

The other fellows are Jos Charles, Angel Nafis, Alison C. Rollins, and Javier Zamora.

Read more about Akbar at kavehakbar.com.

Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822