Biography
Mohja Kahf is a Syrian-American poet, novelist, and professor who was born in Damascus. She is the author of four poetry collections. Her most recent, My Lover Feeds Me Grapefruit, converses across the centuries with the erotic poetry of Arab women from the past, and won the 2020 Press 53 Award for Poetry. Kahf's lyrical, imaginative poems marry American free verse with Arabic oral tradition and poetry, and bring together contemporary slang and Quranic suras. Her family moved to the United States in 1971, and Kahf grew up in the Midwest. Some of her work has been translated to Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Japanese, Italian, German, and French. Kahf won a Pushcart Prize for creative nonfiction, and co-writes a column on sexuality for the website Muslim Wake Up. She is a professor of English at the University of Arkansas.