Zeina Hashem Beck

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her third poetry collection, O, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award for Poetry and was named a Best Book of the Year by Literary Hub and The New York Public Library. Her previous full-length collections are Louder than Hearts, winner of the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, and To Live in Autumn, winner of the 2013 Backwaters Prize. She’s also the author of two chapbooks: 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook prize, and There Was and How Much There Was, a 2016 Laureate’s Choice selected by Carol Ann Duffy. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, The Nation, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Zeina’s invented The Duet, a bilingual poetic form where English and Arabic exist separately and in relationship to each other. She’s the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast in Arabic about Arabic poetry. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina has recently moved with her family to California.