Yahia Lababidi

Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian-American thinker and poet, twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work appears in international publications and websites, such as Best American Poetry, AGNI, On Being, World Literature Today, The London Magazine, Philosophy Now and Rain Taxi, while he has been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, and in The Guardian, among other places.

Lababidi’s first book Signposts to Elsewhere (Jane Street Press) was selected as a 2008 Book of the Year by The Independent (UK). His next book, the critically acclaimed collection of literary and cultural essays, Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly-Dancing was followed by a well-received poetry collection, Fever Dreams. Lababidi’s latest books are a series of ecstatic, literary dialogues with Alex Stein, The Artist as Mystic: Conversations with Yahia Lababidi, as well as a collection of short poems, Barely There, touching on the life of the spirit. He was chosen as a Juror for the 2012 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. 

Lababidi’s work has also appeared in several anthologies, such as Geary’s Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, where he is the only contemporary Arab poet featured; the best-selling US college textbook, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing; and, most recently, Short Flights, the first collection of modern American aphorists. His writing has been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, Slovak, Italian, and Dutch. Lababidi has participated in international poetry festivals in the United States, Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East, while video adaptations of his poems have been shown in film festivals worldwide.