Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye
Born	(1952-03-12) March 12, 1952 Brotherville, United States
Occupation	Poet, Songwriter
Genre	Poetry

Naomi Shihab Nye (Arabic: نعومي شهاب ناي) (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home. She says a visit to her grandmother in the village of Sinjil was a life-changing experience.

Biography

At the age of six, Nye began writing poems as soon as she learned how to write. She was influenced by her mother who read to her all the time. At first her early works were based on childish things such as cats, squirrels, friends, teachers, etc. It wasn't until she was fourteen that she visited her Palestinian grandmother. This experience heavily influenced her political views and would eventually become part of the messages in her many collections of poetry. Her book "Fuel" is an example. Some of her earlier works were published in Seventeen, Modern Poetry Sasdfjal;dfjka;dljf;tudies, and Ironwood.

Literary career

Nye's first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, explored the theme of similarities and differences between cultures, which would become one of her lifelong areas of focus. Her other books include poetry collections 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me, Red Suitcase, Field Trip and Fuel; a collection of essays entitled Never in a Hurry; a young-adult novel called Habibi (the semi-autobiographical story of an Arab-American teenager who moves to Jerusalem in the 1990s) and picture book Lullaby Raft, which is also the title of one of her two albums of music. (The other is called Rutabaga-Roo; both were limited-edition.) Nye has edited many anthologies of poems, for audiences both young and old. One of the best-known is This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World, which contains translated work by 129 poets from 69 different countries. Her most recent anthology is called Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems & Paintings from Texas.

Awards and recognition

Nye has won many awards and fellowships, among them four Pushcart Prizes, the Jane Addams Children's Book award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and many notable book and best book citations from the American Library Association, and a 2000 Witter Bynner Fellowship. In June 2009, Nye was named as one of PeaceByPeace.com's first peace heroes.

In October 2012, she was named laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. The NSK Prize is a $25,000 juried award sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and World Literature Today magazine. In her nominating statement, Ibtisam Barakat, the juror who championed Nye for the award wrote, “Naomi’s incandescent humanity and voice can change the world, or someone’s world, by taking a position not one word less beautiful than an exquisite poem.” Barakat also commended her work by saying, “Naomi’s poetry masterfully blends music, images, colors, languages, and insights into poems that ache like a shore pacing in ebb and flow, expecting the arrival of meaning.”

Published works

Poetry

• Different Ways to Pray: Poems. Breitenbush Publications. 1980. ISBN 978-0-932576-04-0.
• Hugging the Jukebox. Dutton. 1982. ISBN 978-0-525-47703-7.
• Yellow Glove. Breitenbush Books. 1986. ISBN 978-0-932576-41-5.
• Red Suitcase: Poems. Consortium Book Sales & Dist. 1994. ISBN 978-1-880238-14-1.
• Fuel: poems. BOA Editions, Ltd. 1998. ISBN 978-1-880238-63-9.
• 19 varieties of gazelle: poems of the Middle East. HarperCollins. 2002. ISBN 978-0-06-009766-0.
• You & yours: poems. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2005. ISBN 978-1-929918-69-0.

Novels

• Habibi. Simon and Schuster. 1999. ISBN 978-0-689-82523-1.

Short Stories

• There is no Long Distance Now. HarperCollins. 2011. ISBN 978-0-06-201965-3.

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Discography

• Rutabaga-Roo - I've Got A Song And It's For You (Flying Cat - 1979)

Editor

• Naomi Shihab Nye, ed. (1996). This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World. Aladdin Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0-689-80630-8.
• Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets. HarperCollins. 2000. ISBN 978-0-688-16193-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

Critical studies

• Gómez-Vega, Ibis. "The Art of Telling Stornoyies in the Poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye." MELUS 26.4 (Winter 2001): 245-252.
• Gómez-Vega, Ibis. "Extreme Realities: Naomi Shihab Nye's Essays and Poems." Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 30 (2010): 109-133.
• Mercer, Lorraine, and Linda Strom. "Counter Narratives: Cooking Up Stories of Love and Loss in Naomi Shihab Nye's Poetry and Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent." MELUS 32.4 (Winter 2007):
• Orfalea, Gregory. "Doomed by Our Blood to care: The Poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye." Paintbrush 18.35 (Spring 1991): 56-66.

Forewords

• Clack, Cary, (2009). Clowns and Rats Scare Me. Trinity University Press.

Further reading

• Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists featuring Naomi Shihab Nye. Edited by Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson (Trinity University Press, 2008).

External links

• Profile and poems of Naomi Shihab Nye at the Poetry Foundation.
• Nye's page at Poets.org
• Guide to the Naomi Shihab Nye Papers, 1894-2008
• Nye's open "Letter to Potential Terrorists"
• Bill Moyers interview with Nye
• Interview with Nye in Pif Magazine
• Nye's page at the Barclay Agency
• Profile of Nye at the Institute for Middle East Understanding
• Photograph of Naomi Nye at a book-signing at The Twig Bookshop in San Antonio, Texas on June 12, 2008.
• The University of Texas at San Antonio houses a collection of papers from Naomi Shihab Nye. The collection includes the typescripts, manuscripts, drafts, proofs, and other pre-publication forms of the writings of poet and writer Nye. Writings include early and revised drafts of poems, essays, and other writings. Published work is supplemented by hundreds of unpublished poems.