Jane Hirshfield reads her poems as part of the Pièces de Résistance Benefit Reading. Series Celebrating Alaska Quarterly Review's 40th Anniversary.

Jane Hirshfield is a poet, translator, essayist, and editor. Her poetry collections include Ledger (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020); The Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also edited and co-translated books with Mariko Aratani and Robert Bly. Hirshfield has written two books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. The Ink Dark Moon, her co-translation of the work of the two foremost women poets of classical-era Japan, was instrumental in bringing tanka (a 31-syllable Japanese poetic form) to the attention of American poets. She has edited four books collecting the work of poets from the past and is noted as being “part of a wave of important scholarship then seeking to recover the forgotten history of women writers.” She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985, the Academy of American Poets’ 2004 Fellowship[ for Distinguished Achievement, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 2005, and the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Award in American Poetry in 2012.

Hirshfield is a contributing editor for The Alaska Quarterly Review and Ploughshares, a former guest editor of The Pushcart Prize Anthology and an advisory editor at Orion and Tricycle. She served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012-2017) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019.

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Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poems as part of the Pièces de Résistance Benefit Reading. Series Celebrating Alaska Quarterly Review's 40th Anniversary.

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of numerous books of poems, including Cast Away: Poems for Our Time, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Transfer, You and Yours, which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. Her poems and short stories have appeared in various journals and reviews throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East.

Nye’s honors include awards from the International Poetry Forum and the Texas Institute of Letters, the Carity Randall Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. In 1988, she received the Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, judged by W. S. Merwin. Nye is current Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate, serving from 2019 to 2021.

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Yusef Komunyakaa reads his poems as part of the Pièces de Résistance Benefit Reading. Series Celebrating Alaska Quarterly Review's 40th Anniversary.

Yusef Komunyakaa is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He is known for his autobiographical poems about race, the Vietnam War, and jazz and blues. Komunyakaa is the author of 16 collections of poetry. He teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

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Celeste Ng is an American writer and novelist. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, Amazon’s Best Fiction Book of 2017, winner of the Ohioana Award, and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction. Ng’s short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications.

Ng is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.

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Dina Nayeri is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She is the author of the novels A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Refuge. Her memoir, The Ungrateful Refugee, was a finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2020 Clara Johnson Award. Her essay of the same name was one of the most widely shared 2017 Long Reads in The Guardian.

Nayeri was a 2019 Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination fellow. Her awards include 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, O. Henry Prize (for a story that initially appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review), The Best American Short Stories, and fellowships from the McDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo. Her stories and essays have been published by Alaska Quarterly Review, The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Granta New Voices, Wall Street Journal, and many others. She currently lives in Scotland.

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Celeste Ng is an American writer and novelist. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, Amazon’s Best Fiction Book of 2017, winner of the Ohioana Award, and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction. Ng’s short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications. Ng is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.

Dina Nayeri is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She is the author of the novels A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Refuge. Her memoir, The Ungrateful Refugee, was a finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2020 Clara Johnson Award. Her essay of the same name was one of the most widely shared 2017 Long Reads in The Guardian. Nayeri was a 2019 Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination fellow. Her awards include 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, O. Henry Prize (for a story that initially appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review), The Best American Short Stories, and fellowships from the McDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo. Her stories and essays have been published by Alaska Quarterly Review, The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Granta New Voices, Wall Street Journal, and many others. She currently lives in Scotland.

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