Hayan Charara

1972 –
Read poems by this poet

Hayan Charara earned his BA in English from Wayne State University, a master’s degree in the humanities from New York University, and a PhD from the University of Houston’s literature and creative writing program. 

Charara is the author of four poetry collections: These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit (Milkweed Editions, 2022), a 2023 finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016); The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006), which was nominated for the National Book Award; and The Alchemist’s Diary (Hanging Loose Press, 2001). Charara is also the editor of Inclined to Speak (University of Arkansas Press, 2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. His children’s book The Three Lucys (Lee & Low Books, 2015) received the New Voices Award Honor. 

Charara is also a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a winner of both the John Clare Prize and the Lucille Joy Prize in Poetry from the University of Houston’s creative writing program.

Charara, who has been a university instructor since 1998, currently teaches at the University of Houston.