FARMINGTON – Alice James Books is pleased to announce that Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf is the recipient of the 28th annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. This book was published by Alice James Books in September 2017.
The $1,500 award, which is named after Emerson College’s former president, honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer, alternating annually between poetry and fiction. This year’s judge was John Skoyles, Ploughshares’ poetry editor. In choosing the book, Skoyles said: “The poems in Calling a Wolf a Wolf seem more ignited than written. A powerful propulsion drives each line into its next confrontation with events, figures and moments of recollection. Kaveh Akbar writes with both urgency and precision.” Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Two out of each year’s four issues are guest-edited by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles; the Fall and Winter issues are staff-edited. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats.
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His first book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published by Alice James Books in the U.S. and Penguin in the U.K. He is also the author of a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry. Kaveh is the founding editor of Divedapper, a home for interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.
Founded in 1973, Alice James Books is a leading independent press of national reputation dedicated to discovering and publishing exceptional poetry. The press continues to grow its list and is seen as an innovator in the field. AJB is committed to publishing a range of voices, supporting writers’ careers, and publishing women and other writers whose work may otherwise be marginalized. AJB also focuses on collaborating with writers in the publishing process, namely design and production. As they urgently engage with numerous pressing, public issues, many AJB books reach far beyond the “standard audience” for poetry. Since 1994, AJB has been a proud affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington.
For more information about Alice James Books and our partnership with the University of Maine at Farmington, please visit: www.alicejamesbooks.org.
