Khaled Mattawa

Khaled Mattawa
Born	1964 (age 47–48) Benghazi, Libya
Occupation	Poet, Translator & Essayist
Period	1995–present
Genres	Poetry
Notable work(s)	Ismalia Eclipse, The Zodiac of Echoes, Amorisco

Khaled Mattawa (born 1964) is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He works as an Assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, where he currently lives and writes.

Background

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 and completing bachelors 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 from Indiana University where he taught creative writing. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge.

His work has appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Callaloo, 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 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.

Khaled Mattawa is a contributing editor for Banipal magazine, the leading independent magazine of contemporary Arab literature translated into English. He is president of Radius of Arab American Writers organization RAWI.

Awards and recognition

Khaled Mattawa has won an Academy of American Poets award, the PEN award for literary translation, a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alfred Hodder fellowship from Princeton University 1995-1996, an NEA translation grant, and two Pushcart prizes.

Mattawa has also won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Prize and the Banipal Prize. These are the two major awards for translation of Arabic literature into English. He won the former for his translation of Hatif Janabi's poetry and the latter for Selected Poems of Adunis. The only other person to have won both the Arkansas and the Banipal awards is Samah Selim.

Bibliography

Poetry

• Tocqueville New Issues, 2010 ISBN 9781930974906
• Amorisco Ausable Press, 2008, ISBN 9781931337441
• Zodiac of Echoes. Ausable Press. 2003. ISBN 9781931337168. http://books.google.com/books?id=8fF0jh4rhEYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Khaled+Mattawa&hl=en&ei=lymLTubSHYj20gG7p9XhBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Ismailia Eclipse The Sheep Meadow Press, 1995, ISBN 9781878818447

Translation from Arabic

• Adonis: Selected Poems (The Margellos World Republic of Letters), Yale 2010, ISBN 9780300153064 (shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize)
• Amjad Nasser, (2009). Shepherd of solitude: selected poems, 1979-2004, Banipal Books, ISBN 9780954966683
• Joumana Haddad, (2008). Invitation to a Secret Feast, Tupelo Press, ISBN 9781932195620
• Iman Mirsal, (2008). These are not oranges, my love: selected poems, Sheep Meadow Press, ISBN 9781931357548
• Maram Al-Massri, (2004). A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor: Selected Poems by Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2004, ISBN 9781852246402; Copper Canyon Press, USA, 2007
• Fadhil Al Azzawi (2004). Miracle Maker, Selected Poems. BOA Editions. ISBN 9781929918454. http://books.google.com/books?id=iHgm2zaZ5DwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Khaled+Mattawa&hl=en&ei=lymLTubSHYj20gG7p9XhBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Saadi Youssef, (2002). Without An Alphabet, Without A Face: Selected Poems Graywolf Press, ISBN 9781555973711
• Fadhil Al Azzawi, (1997). In Every Well A Joseph Is Weeping, poems of Quarterly Review of Books
• Hatif Janabi (1996). Questions and Their Retinue: Selected Poems. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 9781557284327. http://books.google.com/books?id=yXgDgCW7wQcC&pg=PR19&dq=Questions+and+Their+Retinue:+Selected+Poems&hl=en&ei=tS-LTobBJorW0QH41NHdBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Questions%20and%20Their%20Retinue%3A%20Selected%20Poems&f=false. 

Anthologies of Arab American Literature

• Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Arab American Fiction, University of Arkansas Press, 2004 ISBN 978-1-55728-912-4
• Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing, Kitab, 1999, ISBN 9780965203135

See also

• English literature
• Libyan literature
• Arabic literature
• List of Arab American writers

External links

• Selected poems from Web Del Sol
• An interview with Khaled Mattawa on MELUS by Salah D. Hassan
• A Conversation with Khaled Mattawa Jeff Lodge and Patty Paine for Blackbird online literary journal
• University of Michigan MFA Faculty
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography of Khaled Mattawa, including video clip
• "Conversation: Libyan Poet Khaled Mattawa", PBS Newshour, March 1, 2011
• "Ali Ahmida & Khaled Mattawa", Charlie Rose, February 22, 2011