Folger Poetry Board Reading: Naomi Shihab Nye

Each year, the Folger Poetry Board, supporters of the O.B Hardison Poetry series, selects a distinguished poet to share their favorite poems from other poets and to read from their own work. This year’s Folger Poetry Board reader is Naomi Shihab Nye.

About Naomi Shihab Nye

An award-winning Palestinian-American poet, writer, anthologist, and educator, Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She’s been a recipient of many awards for her poetry and received numerous honors for her children’s literature. She was named the 2019 – 2021 Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle. In 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nye is Professor of Creative Writing – Poetry at Texas State University.

Past Folger Poetry Board Readers

Nye follows in the steps of noted poets Martin Espada, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove, Octavio Paz, Gwendolyn Brooks, former British Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, and current British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, all former Folger Poetry Board Readers, a designation which began in 1991 with Mr. Heaney.

Broadside

Each patron will also receive an electronic broadside, a handwritten poem, by Naomi Shihab Nye.