University of Arkansas Professor Wins an Award for Her Poetry Manuscript

Mohja Kahf, a professor in the department of English, the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Program and the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, was recently named the winner of the 2020 Press 53 Award for Poetry.

Professor Kahf is being honored for her manuscript My Lover Feeds Me Grapefruit. The book features poems that converse with the erotic poetry of Arab women from the 7th, 11th and 12th centuries. Her book, which will be published in March, was selected from over 350 manuscripts.

Professor Kahf joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1995. She is the author of the novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (Public Affairs, 2006) and the nonfiction work Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (University of Texas Press, 1999).

A native of Damascus, Syria, Dr. Kahf came to the United States when she was four years old. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers University in New Jersey.