Charif Shanahan (born 1983) is an American poet and translator. His debut poetry collection ''Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing'' (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017) was the recipient of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, selected by Allison Joseph, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's
Thom Gunn Award
The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry is an annual literary award presented by Publishing Triangle to honour works of gay male poetry. First presented in 2001 as the Triangle Award for Gay Poetry, the award was renamed in memory of British poet Tho ...
. His second collection, ''Trace Evidence: Poems'' (Tin House, 2023), was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
The National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, established in 1975, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English". Awards are presented ...
and the
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the U ...
, longlisted for the
National Book Award for Poetry
The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers".
, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award.
Education
Shanahan earned an AB in Comparative Literature from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
; an AM in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation from
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
; and an MFA in Poetry from
NYU
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a non-denominational all-male institutio ...
's Graduate Creative Writing Program, where he studied with Sharon Olds and Yusef Komunyakaa, with whom he had first worked as an undergraduate at Princeton.
Career
Shanahan is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
, where he teaches in the undergraduate and Litowitz MFA+MA programs. Previously, he taught at
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, where he held both a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry and Jones Lectureship in Poetry.
His work has also been anthologized in ''African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song'' (Library of America, 2020), ''Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry'' (Northwestern University Press, 2019), and ''American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time'' (Graywolf Press, 2018).
As a translator, he works primarily from Italian. His translations of Italian-language poets Gëzim Hajdari and Donata Berra have been published in ''Circumference'', ''A Public Space'', and '' RHINO Poetry''.
Awards and honors
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Whiting Award
The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, ...
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
Cave Canem Foundation
Cave Canem Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree programs and wr ...