Yahya Frederickson

Yahya Frederickson is the author of In a Homeland Not Far: New & Selected Poems (Press 53, 2017) and The Gold Shop of Ba-‘Ali, which won Lost Horse Press’s 2013 Idaho Prize.  He’s also the author of four chapbooks: The Birds of Al-Merjeh Square: Poems from Syria, which won the 2013 Open Chapbook Competition at Finishing Line Press; Month of Honey, Month of Missiles (Tigertail, 2009); Returning to Water (Dacotah Territory, 2006); and Trilogy (Dacotah Territory, 1985, with Julie Taylor and Richard Schetnan). His poems and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Arts & Letters, Black Warrior Review, Green Mountains Review, Hanging Loose, Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Quarterly West, and the Southern Review. His translations (with Muhammed Shoukany) of contemporary Saudi Arabian poets appear in New Voices of Arabia: The Poetry: An Anthology from Saudi Arabia (I.B. Tauris, 2012).

Frederickson earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of North Dakota. His honors include the Academy of American Poets's Thomas McGrath Prize and a LRAC/McKnight Foundation Fellowship grant. Between graduate degrees he taught for six years in Yemen, initially as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He has also served as a Fulbright Scholar in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kyrgyzstan. Currently he is a professor of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead.