Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her fourth poetry collection, titled This Was Supposed to Be About Beauty, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in March 2027. Her third poetry collection, O, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award for poetry and was named a Best Book of 2022 by Lit Hub and The New York Public Library.

Her second full-length collection, Louder than Hearts (Bauhan Publishing 2017), won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Poet Naomi Shihab Nye wrote about this book, “Everything Arabic we treasure comes alive in these poems. Readers will feel restored to so many homes, revived, amazed. Zeina Hashem Beck writes with a brilliant, absolutely essential voice.”

Zeina is also the author of two chapbooks: 3arabi Song (Rattle 2016), selected from 1720 manuscripts as winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and There Was and How Much There Was (smith|doorstop 2016), chosen by Carol Ann Duffy, who praised her “remarkable gift for storytelling” in this pamphlet rich with women’s voices. Her first book, To Live in Autumn (The Backwaters Press 2014), centered on Beirut, won the 2013 Backwaters Prize.

Zeina’s poem, "Maqam," won Poetry Magazine's 2017 Frederick Bock Prize. Her poetry has been featured on The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day and has appeared in The Nation, LARB, Lithub, Guernica, and elsewhere.

Zeina’s invented a bilingual poetic form called The Duet, in which Arabic and English exist both independently and in conversation with each other. She is the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast in Arabic about Arabic poetry. She is the co-founder, with poets Arwa Alsamarae and Priscilla Wathington, of the Bay Area SWANA-centered literary series Samar.

After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, she moved to California with her husband and two daughters. Zeina teaches at the MFA programs at Warren Wilson and Saint Mary’s University of Moraga, California.

For booking, email zeinabeck@gmail.com