The Poetry Project

Randa Jarrar

Randa Jarrar’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Utne Reader, Salon, The Offing, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Sun, Medium, and others. Her first book, the Arab-American coming of age novel, A Map of Home, is now on many college syllabi. It was published in seven languages & won a Hopwood Award and an Arab-American Book Award. Her most recent book, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, won an American Book Award, a PEN Oakland Award, and a Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was named a Key Collection for Fall 2016 by Library Journal and one of Electric Literature‘s 25 best collections of the year. Jarrar is a columnist for Bitch Magazine, has worked with PEN American to judge fiction prizes and to put on events, and was the PEN Ten Interviews editor in 2016-17. She is the Executive Director of RAWI, a literary nonprofit that serves Arab-American writers. Jarrar has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Hedgebrook, and others. In 2010, she was named one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40. She is the translator of several Arabic short stories and a novel, and has taught for MFA programs at CSU-Fresno and Sierra Nevada College, and at Tin House’s Summer Workshop. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was a Zell Fellow.