Ammiel Alcalay

Poet, novelist, translator, critic, political commentator, and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay is the author, co-author or translator of over thirty books, including After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture, Keys to the Garden, a little history, Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999, Semezdin Mehmedinović’s Sarajevo Blues, translated from Bosnian, and Faraj Bayrakdar’s A Dove in Free Flight, co-edited and co-translated from Arabic with Shareah Taleghani.

            Recent books include CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books; Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, co-translated from Arabic with Khaled al-Hilli and Emna Zghal; and a book of essays Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. A new book of poems, Imperial Abhorrences / For Palestine, in collaboration with the Palestinian artist Kholoud Hammad, is forthcoming in Fall 2025. He is a regular columnist in Middle East Eye and his work has appeared in bigger and smaller venues, from The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and The New Yorker, to The Poetry Project Newsletter, Clotheline, and dozens of other small magazines and literary journals.

            While bringing works from other parts of the world to the US via translation and advocacy, Alcalay has also helped reconfigure contemporary US literary and cultural history through his unique publishing, pedagogical, and public project, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, recognized in 2017 with a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award.

            At Queens College, CUNY, he is former chair of the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation. At the CUNY Graduate Center, Alcalay is a member of the faculties in Africana Studies, American Studies, Biography & Memoir Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Medieval Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He was named Distinguished Professor in 2023.