Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes.  Her books of poetry for adults and children include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award) , A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, Red Suitcase, Words Under the Words, Fuel,  Transfer, You & Yours (a best-selling poetry book of 2006), Mint Snowball,  Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Come with Me: Poems for a Journey, and Honeybee (awarded the 2008 Arab American Book Award in the Children’s/Young Adult category), and The Tiny Journalist. The Tiny Journalist won Best Poetry Book from both the Texas Institute of Letters and the Writers League of Texas. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry,  and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are you Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven.  Her fiction books for young people include Habibi, Going Going, There Is No Long Distance Now, and The Turtle of Oman. The Turtle of Oman was chosen a Horn Book Best Book of 2014, a 2015 Notable Children’s Book by the American Library Association, and was awarded the 2015 Middle East Book Award for Youth Literature. Her picture books include Baby Radar, Sitti’s Secrets, and Famous. She has also edited nine poetry anthologies including I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, Time You Let Me In, This Same Sky, The Space Between Our Footsteps, and  What Have You Lost?. She recently wrote Cast Away: Poems for Our Time which was one of the Washington Post’s best children’s books of 2020. Her new book is Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (Greenwillow, September 29, 2020).