Dina Nayeri

2021–22 Visiting Fellow

Dina Nayeri is the author of The Ungrateful Refugee, winner of the 2020 Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, finalist for the 2021 Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, the 2019 Kirkus Prize, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the 2020 Clara Johnson Award. Her essay of the same name was one of the most widely shared 2017 Long Reads in the Guardian. A 2019 Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination Fellow, winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant (2015), O. Henry Prize(2015), Best American Short Stories (2018), and fellowships from the McDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, and Yaddo, her stories and essays have been published by the New York TimesNew York Times Magazine, the GuardianLos Angeles TimesNew YorkerGrantaWall Street Journal, and many others. Her debut novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (2013) was translated to 14 languages. Her second novel, Refuge (2017) was a New York Times editor’s choice. She holds a BA from Princeton, an MBA from Harvard, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and Teaching Writing Fellow.

The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding. The Visiting Fellowship offer writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library.

The Visiting Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.