Etel Adnan Prize Winner Maya Salameh Holds Reading, Writing Workshop

Photo by Katie Han

The Open Mouth Literary Center invites the U of A community to attend a virtual reading and poetry writing workshop featuring poet Maya Salameh, winner of the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, who will read from her prize-winning poetry collection How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave (University of Arkansas Press, 2022) this Sunday, April 9. Both events are free and open to the public.

Salameh is the author of How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave (University of Arkansas Press, 2022) and rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). She is the youngest-ever winner of the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2022 Previously Published Poetry Prize and 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She has served as a National Student Poet, America's highest honor for youth poets, and received fellowships from the William Male Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, the Markaz Resource Center and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Rumpus, AGNI, Asian American Writer's Workshop, KPBS and the LA Times, among others. She can be found @mayaslmh or at mayasalameh.com.

These events are sponsored by the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies and are free and open to the public. They will take place virtually via Zoom with captioning, and an ASL interpreter will be present. Access copies of poems and workshop materials will be made available to attendees.

Every year the University of Arkansas Press, together with the Radius of Arab American Writers, accepts submissions for the Etel Adnan Poetry Series and awards the $1,000 prize to a first or second book of poetry, in English, by a writer of Arab heritage. Since its founding in 1996 the Radius of Arab American Writers has celebrated and fostered the writings and writers that make up the vibrant and diverse Arab American community.

The Etel Adnan Poetry Prize is supported by the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the U of A. It is named in honor of the world-renowned Lebanese poet, novelist, essayist and artist Etel Adnan, who the journal MELUS — The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States — called "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today."

Ritual as Origin: A Workshop with Maya Salameh
April 9 at 2 p.m. (Register here)

A Reading with Maya Salameh
April 9 at 7 p.m. (Register here)

About the Open Mouth Reading Series: The Open Mouth Reading Series is a community-based poetry series located in Fayetteville, Arkansas, founded by poets M.D. Myers and Molly Bess Rector in October of 2015. A federal 501(c)(3) non-profit, Open Mouth works to enrich the Northwest Arkansas community through close contact with poetry and with poets from the larger literary world. Open Mouth hosts readings, workshops, a summer poetry retreat and an annual fall poetry festival. For more information about Open Mouth or to donate, visit openmouthliterary.org and sign up for the Open Mouth newsletter.

About the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies: The King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies is an academic and research unit in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the U of A, dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East and the geo-cultural area in which Islamic civilization prospered and continues to shape world history.

About the University of Arkansas Press: The University of Arkansas Press advances the mission of the U of A by publishing peer-reviewed scholarship and literature of enduring value. The Press publishes works by authors of diverse backgrounds writing for specialty as well as general audiences in Arkansas and throughout the world.