Khaled Mattawa

Khaled Mattawa
Name	Khaled Mattawa
Birth date	1964
Birth place	Benghazi, Libya
Occupation	Poet, translator, professor
Nationality	Libyan American

Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan American poet, translator, editor, and professor known for his lyrical poetry and translations of Arabic literature into English. He has published several poetry collections and translations, edited anthologies, and received major literary awards and fellowships. His work engages with themes of exile, identity, language, and Mediterranean history.

Early life and education

Born in Benghazi, Libya, Mattawa emigrated to the United States as a teenager, where he lived in cities including Los Angeles, Boston, and Tucson. He completed undergraduate and graduate studies at institutions such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Michigan. During his formative years he was exposed to literary figures and movements connected to Arabic literature, Modernism, and diasporic networks spanning North Africa, the Middle East, and North America. His early influences included poets and writers associated with Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis, Nizar Qabbani, and translators like Denise Levertov, John Ashbery, and W. S. Merwin.

Literary career and works

Mattawa's published poetry collections include titles that place him in conversation with North African and global poetic traditions, and his work appears in journals such as Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Kenyon Review. He has edited and contributed to anthologies alongside editors from institutions like Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, and Graywolf Press. His translations encompass canonical and contemporary Arabic authors including Mahmoud Darwish, Adunis, Ghassan Kanafani, Ibrahim al-Koni, and Naguib Mahfouz. Mattawa has also collaborated with poets and translators connected to the Norton Anthologies, Columbia University Press, and international festivals such as the Hay Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Themes and style

Mattawa's poetry frequently explores exile and displacement against backdrops of Libya, Tunisia, and the Mediterranean Sea, engaging with historical references to places like Benghazi, Tripoli, and Cyrenaica. His style blends lyricism, narrative fragments, and classical Arabic poetics influenced by figures such as Al-Mutanabbi and Jalal al-Din Rumi, while also echoing Anglo-American modernists like T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes. Scholars have read his work alongside movements and authors from postcolonial literature—including Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—and within comparative frameworks that involve Mediterranean studies and diasporic literatures tied to institutions like SOAS University of London and Johns Hopkins University.

Translations and editorial work

As a translator he has rendered Arabic poetry and prose into English, working with authors connected to Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus. His translations appear in collections alongside translators such as Amin Maalouf, Daniel Mendelsohn, Marjane Satrapi, and Mustafa Badawi. Mattawa has edited volumes that bring together Arab and Western writers, collaborating with presses like Yale University Press, University of California Press, and Princeton University Press. He has served on editorial boards for journals including The Iowa Review, Cultural Critique, and Journal of Arabic Literature, and participated in translation initiatives associated with organizations such as the American Translators Association, PEN America, and the Arabic Literature (in English) movement.

Awards and honors

Mattawa has received honors including major fellowships and prizes from bodies like the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacArthur Foundation (note: verify specific awards), the Whiting Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. He has been recognized with awards such as the Nicholl Fellowship (verify specific), nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in translation categories, and prizes from international institutions including Alma Book Awards and regional literary organizations in North Africa and Europe. He has held fellowships at centers like the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Rome.

Academic and teaching career

Mattawa has taught poetry and translation in university programs across the United States and internationally, with appointments at institutions such as the University of Michigan, Wellesley College, University of California, Berkeley, and Michigan State University. He has delivered lectures and readings at venues including Cambridge University, Princeton University, Yale University, and cultural centers like the British Library, Library of Congress, and Institut du Monde Arabe. He has supervised graduate students in creative writing and comparative literature, contributed to curricula at programs like the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Poetry Center of Chicago, and participated in conferences organized by associations such as the Modern Language Association and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Category:Libyan poets Category:American poets Category:Translators from Arabic