Ammiel Alcalay

AMMIEL ALCALAY grew up in Boston. Writing came early and remained constant despite many different kinds of work. A poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, his books include a little history, from the warring factions, “neither wit nor gold”(from then), Islanders, Scrapmetal: work in progress, Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999, and After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture. Ghost Talk, a poem sequence, A Bibliography for After Jews & Arabs and A Dove in Flight, by Syrian poet and former political prisoner Faraj Bayrakdar, co-edited with Shareah Taleghani, all came out in 2021. Follow the Person: Archival Encounters is due out in 2025, along with Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, co-translated from Arabic with Khaled al-Hilli and Emna Zghal. His work has appeared in both small and large venues, from The Poetry Project Newsletter to Time Magazine and the New York Times, with everything in-between.

During the war in former Yugoslavia, he was one of the only translators working from Bosnian, and translated numerous texts emerging directly from the war, including Sarajevo: A War Journal by Zlatko Dizdarević and The Tenth Circle of Hell by camp survivor Rezak Hukanović. Other translations include Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias by Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinović, Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing, and the co-translation, with Oz Shelach, of Outcast by Shimon Ballas.

In the 1980s, Alcalay worked with various grass roots organizations in Israel/Palestine, including East for Peace, The Oriental Front, the Committee Confronting the Iron Fist, and the Alternative Information Center, while also reporting for Amnesty and other Human Rights organizations. He is or has been on the advisory board of The Arab Image Foundation, ArteEast, Archipelago Books, Beyond Baroque Arts Center, The Levantine Center/The Markaz, The Preservation of Sound Archives at the Jack Kerouac School of Naropa University, the Maud/Olson Library, the Bosnian journal Inner Land, the International Forum on Bosnia, the journals Levant and Mediterraneans, as well as various other North American and international bodies. He is a Contributing Editor to the new on-line journal The Markaz Review.

Alcalay has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford as well as Georgetown, where he was the first Visiting Lannan Professor of Poetics. Named a Distinguished Professor in 2023, at Queens College, CUNY, he is a member and former chair of the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Cultures & Languages. At the Graduate Center, CUNY, he is a member of the faculties in Africana Studies, American Studies, Biography & Memoir Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Medieval Studies, and Middle East & Middle East in America Studies. Alcalay is the founder and general editor, under the auspices of the PhD program in English and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative (http://centerforthehumanities.org/lost-and-found), ongoing work which was recognized in 2017 with a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award.