Hayan Charara, Ph.D.
Hayan Charara, Ph.D., is a poet, novelist, children’s book author, essayist, editor, and Associate Professor,
The Honors College. His poetry books are “The Alchemist’s Diary” (2001), “The Sadness
of Others” (2006), “Something Sinister” (2016), and “These Trees, Those Leaves, This
Flower, That Fruit” (2022). He is also the author of the novel, “Hush, Little Children
(2025), and his children’s book, “The Three Lucys” (2016), received the New Voices
Award Honor, and he edited “Inclined to Speak” (2008), an anthology of contemporary
Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan
Poetry Prize, which publishes first and second poetry books by poets of Arab heritage.
His honors include a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the Lucille Joy Prize in Poetry from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program,
the John Clare Prize, and the Arab American Book Award.
Born in Detroit in 1972 to Arab immigrants (both parents came to the United States
from Lebanon, in the 1960s), he studied biology and chemistry at Wayne State University
before turning to poetry. He spent a decade in New York City, where he earned a master’s
degree from New York University’s Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program. In 2004,
he moved to Texas, where he eventually earned his Ph.D. in literature and creative
writing at the University of Houston. He is a past president of RAWI, the Radius of
Arab American Writers, Inc., a national literary arts organization that provides mentoring,
community, and support for Arab American writers and those with roots in the Arabic
speaking world and the diaspora.
He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Queens College,
the City University of New York-La Guardia, the University of Texas at Austin, Trinity
University, and Our Lady of the Lake University. He currently teaches in the Honors
College and for the English Department and Creative Writing Program at the University
of Houston.