Monk Fruit

*Renowned human rights activist: The author founded City of Asylum in Detroit.
*Widely published: Poems have been published in The Paris Review, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Salem's fiction has appeared in BOMB Magazine and Granta.
*Award-winning author: Winner of the 2023 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series and 2021 Bergman Prize, selected by Louise Glück, among others
*Acclaimed short fiction writer: Winner of BOMB Magazine's 2021 Fiction Contest, selected by Ottessa Moshfegh, as well as the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize in Short Fiction, and published in Catapult's 2023 Best Debut Short Stories.
*Palestinian American: The author was born in the United States to Palestinian parents. A central concern of his work is the occupation of Palestine.
*Humorous and provocative: The author has an absurdist sensibility. He describes the poems as “tragicomic.”
*For readers of: Rumi, Kaveh Akbar, and Solmaz Sharif.

Edward Salem's second poetry collection, Intifadas (2026), was selected for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. He is also the author of Monk Fruit (2025). Salem won the 2022 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and BOMB's 2021 Fiction Contest. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is the co-founder of City of Asylum/Detroit, a nonprofit that provides safe-haven fellowships to writers and artists in exile who have been persecuted for their work.