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Fady Joudah

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Fady Joudah
Joudah at the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival.
Joudah at the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival.
Born1971
Austin, Texas
OccupationPhysician, Poet
NationalityPalestinian-American

Fady Joudah (born 1971) is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems The Earth in the Attic.[1]

Life

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Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the University of Georgia in Athens, and then the Medical College of Georgia, before completing his medical training at the University of Texas. Joudah currently practices as an ER physician in Houston, Texas. He has also volunteered abroad with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.[2]

Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry,[3] The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.

In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of recent poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish translated from Arabic,[4] which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.[3]

In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.[5] In 2017, Joudah translated Zaqtan's The Silence That Remains. His book of poetry Alight was published in 2013. His 2021 poetry collection, Tethered to the Stars, was cited by Cleveland Review of Books as a poetry collection that "does not teach us how to answer any question it poses with a stylized rhetoric, a self-important flourish; the poems model a lyrical thinking which prompts the question itself."[6]

Joudah won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American writer of “exceptional talent.[7] His work entitled [...] was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection Shortlist[8] and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.[9]

In other media

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In October 2014, Joudah was interviewed for the documentary Poetry of Witness, directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo.

Works

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  • The Earth in the Attic. Yale University Press. April 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-13431-5.
  • Mahmoud Darwish (2007). The Butterfly's Burden. Translator Fady Joudah. Copper Canyon Press. ISBN 978-1-55659-241-6.
  • Mahmoud Darwish (2009). If I were another. Translator Fady Joudah. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-374-17429-3.
  • Alight (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)
  • Mahmoud Darwish (2017). The Silence That Remains. Translator Fady Joudah. Copper Canyon Press. ISBN 978-1-55659-514-1.
  • Contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue between East and West. Gingko Library, ISBN 9781909942554
  • Tethered to Stars (Milkweed Editions, 2021) ISBN 9781571315342
  • […] (2024) ISBN 9781639551286[10]

References

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  1. ^ Fritz Lanham (April 13, 2008). "Palestinian-American doctor turns suffering into song". The Houston Chronicle.
  2. ^ "Fady Joudah: Doctor and poet". Institute for Middle East Understanding. Archived from the original on September 30, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2011.
  3. ^ a b Foundation, Poetry (December 23, 2020). "Fady Joudah". Poetry Foundation.
  4. ^ Steve Kowit (30 July 2006). "Poets beautifully plead for peace for people of Mideast". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Archived from the original on 23 November 2008.
  5. ^ "Griffin Poetry Prize: Fady Joudah".
  6. ^ "In the Cosmic Theater: On Fady Joudah's "Tethered to Stars"". Cleveland Review of Books. Retrieved 2021-12-02.
  7. ^ "Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah receives $100,000 prize". AP News. 2024-04-18. Retrieved 2024-06-14.
  8. ^ Anderson, Porter (July 17, 2024). "UK: Shortlists Named for the 2024 Forward Prizes for Poetry". Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved September 10, 2024.
  9. ^ "The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist". The New Yorker. 12 September 2024. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  10. ^ "A Palestinian Valentine from the Future: On Fady Joudah's "[…]"". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2024-03-06. Retrieved 2024-03-08.