Hayan Charara is a poet, novelist, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. 

His poetry books are These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit (Milkweed Editions 2022), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination, Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon Univ Press 2016), The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon Univ Press 2006), and The Alchemist’s Diary (Hanging Loose Press 2001).

His debut novel, Hush, Little Children, is forthcoming from Flexible Press in October, 2025.

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 co-founder and series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. His honors include the Arab American Book Award, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lucille Joy Prize in Poetry from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, and the John Clare Prize. 

Born in Detroit in 1972 to Arab immigrants, 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 PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston. 

He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Queens College, Jersey City University, the City University of New York-La Guardia, the University of Texas at Austin, Trinity University, and Our Lady of the Lake University. He is a professor in the Honors College at the University of Houston.

Hayan is represented by Ismita Hussain at Great Dog Literary.