Kaveh Akbar and Melissa Febos, two faculty members in the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, were appointed the Roy J. Carver Professorship.
The five-year appointment is effective July 1 and recognizes the highest levels of achievement in scholarship and teaching.
Kaveh Akbar
Akbar is the author of two internationally acclaimed award-winning books of poetry, Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell. His debut novel Martyr! landed on the New York Times Best Seller list and Top 10 Books of 2024. The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Award.
He is also the author of a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic and editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine.
Akbar was selected for the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. He is also the recipient of the Levis Reading Prize, multiple Pushcart Prizes, Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, and Civitella Ranieri Fellowship.
“Professor Akbar exemplifies the blending of critical and creative practice which we are innovating in the English department; he is both an artist and a scholar,” department chair Loren Glass wrote in a supporting statement.
Glass added how Akbar is a “humble and gracious member of the literary community, supporting and celebrating other creative writers and literary institutions around the world.”
Melissa Febos
Febos is the author of five internationally acclaimed award-winning books of creative nonfiction: Whip Smart, Abandon Me, Girlhood, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. The Dry Season is being published in June.
Girlhood was named as one of the best books of the year by NPR and The Washington Post. Body Work received similar acclaim and became a national bestseller upon publication.
Febos received both a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 2022. She also received a Mid-Career Faculty Scholar Award and a Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Humanities Research Award from the University of Iowa.
Department chair Loren Glass wrote in a supporting statement that Febos is an invaluable asset for the department, CLAS, the university, and the profession of creative writing.
“In creatively combining personal writing with academic research, Professor Febos has revolutionized the memoir as both a genre and a pedagogical practice, encouraging writers to configure their experiences in critical contexts that integrate their lives into broader cultural and historical communities,” Glass wrote.