Charif Shanahan


Charif Shanahan is an American poet, translator, educator, and editor.

Early life and education

Shanahan was born in the Bronx to an Irish American father from New York City and a Moroccan mother. His paternal line originates in County Kerry, Ireland. His maternal line migrated from southern Morocco to Casablanca and extends through Morocco to Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. During his twenties, Shanahan lived transnationally in the United Kingdom, Morocco, Italy, and Switzerland.
He holds an AB in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing from Princeton University; an AM in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation from Dartmouth College; and an MFA in Poetry from NYU'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's debut poetry collection Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing: poems 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. Shanahan was called "a vital and profound new voice" by Publishers Weekly.
His second collection, Trace Evidence: Poems, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award, and the Whiting Award. About Shanahan's work, the 2024 Whiting Award judges wrote:
Shanahan's poems are anthologized in Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, and American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, where he teaches in the undergraduate and Litowitz MFA+MA creative writing programs. Previously, he taught at Stanford University, where he held both a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry and Jones Lectureship in Poetry.
His translations from Italian of Gëzim Hajdari and Donata Berra have been published in Circumference, A Public Space, and RHINO Poetry.
From December 2022 through July 2023, Shanahan served as Guest Editor of Poetry magazine.

Awards and honors

Books

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