The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce that the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize has been awarded to Maya Salameh for her manuscript How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave. The poet will receive a $1,000 cash prize, and her manuscript will be published as the fifth title in the Etel Adnan Poetry Series. Edited by poets Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah, the series proudly supports the work of writers of Arab heritage.
“I was delighted to find out I’d received this prize,” says Salameh. “Adnan is one of my writing inspirations, and I’ve enjoyed the works from this series so much. Each collection felt like being let into a new secret, a new universe in my language. It’s an honor to join such a family of books.”
On the genesis of the work she submitted, Salameh emphasized that it was written “first and foremost for Arab girls, and all the newly American girls told to remain quiet and marriageable, often as they feel like they are being suffocated.”
Series editors Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah noted that despite the global pandemic, the submissions for this year’s prize were some of the most accomplished and diverse manuscripts the series has yet seen. “Maya Salameh’s poetry stood out for its inventiveness in cracking the code of life ‘between system and culture,'” they said.
The confluence of the divine and digital are at the heart of How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave. In a layering of prayer, memory, and code, Salameh brings technological concepts into conversation with the daily machinations of womanhood, whether liner, lipstick, or blood. She explores the intimate relationships we have with our devices, speaking back to an algorithm that serves as both watcher and watching, data thief and surrogate confidant. Experimenting with photo and form to create an intimate collage of personal and neocolonial history, these poems explore how an Arab girl survives the digitization of her body. In this collection, Corinthians melt from computers; apostles, Aleppo, and Amy Winehouse sing in tandem.
“The turns and swerves the poems make are astonishing; the expectations they upend are remarkable,” said Charara and Joudah. “Hers is an intelligent, joyous, dynamic poetry that celebrates form and body. It’s a testament to the aesthetic boundaries and intellectual revolt poets of Arab heritage are pushing, breaking, and reinventing.”
Maya Salameh is a Syrian American and Lebanese American poet from San Diego, California. A 2016 National Student Poet, she has performed her writing at venues including the Obama White House, Carnegie Hall, and her parents’ kitchen. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, and The Brooklyn Review, among others. She served in 2020 as the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Markaz Resource Center at Stanford University, and is cochair for the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.
The University of Arkansas Press accepts year-round submissions for the Etel Adnan Poetry Series and annually awards publication and the $1,000 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize to a first or second book of poetry, in English, by a writer of Arab heritage. Since its inception in 2015 the series has sought to celebrate and foster the writings and writers that make up the vibrant Arab American community, and the University of Arkansas Press has long been committed to publishing diverse kinds of poetry by a diversity of poets. The series editors are Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah, and the prize is named in honor of the world-renowned poet, novelist, essayist, and artist Etel Adnan. Publication is supported in part by the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas.