Duny? M?kh???l

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American writer. Her honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, Griffin shortlist, and UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of writing.

Renowned for her subversive, innovative, and satirical poetry, Mikhail speaks about her experiences growing up in a war-torn country, sleeping on the roof of her family’s home during the sweltering summers until the air raid sirens sounded. In an interview with NPR, Mikhail said, “I still feel that poetry is not medicine—it’s an X-ray. It helps you see the wound and understand it. We all feel alienated because of this continuous violence in the world. We feel alone, but we feel also together. So we resort to poetry as a possibility for survival. However, to say I survived is not so final. We wake up to find that the war survived with us.”