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From: "Megdell, Anna" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Friday, September 14, 2018 at 9:21 AM To: David Ratledge <[log in to unmask]> Subject: UT Creative Writing Series Presents Poet Dunya Mikhail On Monday, September 24, poet Dunya Mikhail will read as part of the University of Tennessee Creative Writing Series. Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq (Baghdad) and came to the United States thirty years later. She’s renowned for her subversive, innovative, and satirical poetry. After graduation from the University of Baghdad, she worked as a journalist and translator for the Baghdad Observer. Facing censorship and interrogation, she left Iraq, first to Jordan and then to America (Detroit). Her first book in English The War Works Hard (translated by Elizabeth Winslow) was shortlisted for Griffin and named one of “Twenty-Five Books to Remember from 2005” by the New York Public Library. Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea won the Arab American Book Award. Her other books include The Iraqi Nights (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid) and 15 Iraqi Poets (editor). Her newest book The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq (co-translated with Max Weiss) is selected by Publishers Weekly as one of top ten in non-fiction for spring 2018, and as one of top 10 of the month by The Christian Science Monitor. Amazon editors also picked it as one of top 20 non-fiction books of the month. Mikhail’s honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Knights Foundation grant, the Kresge Fellowship, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She is the co-founder of Michigan-community-based Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture. She currently works as a special lecturer of Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan. The reading begins at 7 p.m. in the McClung Museum Auditorium on the University of Tennessee Campus. The event is free and open to the public; all are encouraged to attend. The mission of the UT Creative Writing Series is to feature “writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from around the country and around the world.” The series is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of English.