Assistant Professor of English
Purdue University
Akbar’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His first book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published by Alice James Books in the U.S. and Penguin in the U.K. in 2017. He is also the author of a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry, 2017).
The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper, a home for interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry.
Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.