AWP23—Maha Ahmed

F***ing Shakespeare

Exploring the specificities of a diaspora while also calling upon ancestral experiences is just one of the many threads Maha Ahmed weaves through her poetry. Like many members of diasporic communities, Maha’s experiences as an Egyptian American do not always resemble the grossly generalized “immigrant story.” We had the opportunity to chat with Maha about writing herself out of this pigeonhole, as well as how she experiences life as a student, scholar, and poet.

She received her MFA at the University of Oregon, and is now a literature and creative writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston (Go Coogs!). She specializes in colonial Egypt, Arab-American diasporic literature, and Arabic to English translation. We talked with her about Rusted Radishes, a Beirut-based literary magazine, and the big-city-but-small-world way she was offered the position as its poetry editor.

We dive deep into the US-centric and profoundly skewed notion that immigrants’ stories only matter once they land on US soil. It is exactly for that reason, Maha insists, people of the diaspora can acknowledge ancestral ties to a place even when it may feel uncomfortable to do so with a hyphenated or dual identity.

Honorable Mentions:

Rusted Radishes

Ars Poetica, published in The Recluse, Issue 17

Professor Tim Mazurek

Audio by Bloomsday Literary in partnership with the official 2023 AWP Conference & Bookfair