Naomi Shihab Nye
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| Born: | March 12, 1952 St. Louis, Missouri |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s): | Poet, Songwriter |
| Genre(s): | Poetry |
| Website: | Naomi Shihab Nye at Poets.com |
Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet and songwriter born to a Palestinian father and American mother.
[edit] Life
Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri to an American mother and a Palestinian father. Nye grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, Jerusalem, Palestine, and San Antonio, Texas. At the age of seven, she published her first poem, and at age 14, her family moved to Jerusalem, where she attended a year of high school. Both roots and sense of place are major themes in her body of work. Nye lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, photographer Michael Nye, and their son Madison.
[edit] Career
Her first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, explored the theme of similarities and differences between cultures, which would become one of her lifelong areas of focus. Her other books include poetry collections 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Red Suitcase, Field Trip and Fuel; a collection of essays entitled Never in a Hurry; a young-adult novel called Habibi (the autobiographical story of an Arab-American teenager who moves to Jerusalem in the 1970s) and picture book Lullaby Raft, which is also the title of one of her two albums of music. (The other is called Rutabaga-Roo; both were limited-edition.) Nye has edited many anthologies of poems, for audiences both young and old. One of the best-known is This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World, which contains translated work by 129 poets from 68 different countries. Her most recent anthology is called Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems & Paintings from Texas.
She is a graduate of Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.
She has won many awards and fellowships, among them four Pushcart Prizes, the Jane Addams Children's Book award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and many notable book and best book citations from the American Library Association.
