Naomi Shihab Nye Wednesday, February 29, 7:00 - 8:20 p.m. (Mardi Gras Ballroom) Pre-Convention Literacy Celebration (sponsored by NEHS) Thursday, March 1, 1:30 - 2:45 p.m. (Acadia) Workshop, followed by a book signing (Carondelet)

Naomi Shihab Nye's Biography at the Poetry Foundation

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer, speaker, and educator who has authored or edited more than 30 works and whose works draw from her own heritage and from 37 years of traveling around the world. Her poetry has appeared in such works as Atlantic, Iowa Review, and Ploughshares, and her collections include Red Suitcase, Fuel, and You & Yours, which was a best-selling poetry book for 2006. Nye, who has been a visiting writer for The Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Hawai'i, also writes works for children and for young adults, among them A Maze Me: Poems for Girls and the novel Habibi. Her newest volume of poetry, Transfer, and a short story collection (There Is No Long Distance Now) are forthcoming in winter 2012. Among her awards Nye counts a Lannan Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and four Pushcart Prizes, and she has appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers.

Excerpt from "Arabic" in Red Suitcase

I thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue
at once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my
shame. To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging

its rich threads without understanding
how to weave the rug . . . I have no gift.
The sound, but not the sense.

I kept looking over his shoulder for someone else
to talk to. . . .

. . .I touched his arm, held it hard,
which is something you don't do in the Middle East, and said,
I'll work on it, feeling sad

for his good strict heart, but later in the slick street
hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped
in every language and opened its doors.