BABEL | Kaveh Akbar

Just Buffalo Literary Center presents BABEL featuring Kaveh Akbar Thursday, November 19, 2026 7:30 pm Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Author Reception for Premium Access ticketholders starts at 6:30pm Join Just Buffalo Literary Center’s BABEL Author Series for an evening with Kaveh Akbar. Kaveh Akbar is an acclaimed poet, novelist, and editor whose work grapples with questions of faith, addiction, belonging, and the search for meaning. His highly anticipated debut novel, Martyr!, became an instant New York Times bestseller and was named a TIME Must-Read Book of the Year. Praised by literary luminaries including Tommy Orange, Lauren Groff, John Green, and Roxane Gay, Martyr! tells the story of Cyrus Shams, a newly sober son of Iranian immigrants navigating addiction, grief, and a family mystery that carries him from the battlefields of Iran to the art galleries of Brooklyn. Electrifying, funny, and deeply humane, the novel heralds the arrival of a vital new voice in contemporary fiction. In his talks, Akbar brings the same searching intelligence, vulnerability, and lyric precision that define his writing. He speaks powerfully on the subjects of creativity, spirituality, identity, and recovery, weaving together personal narrative with broader cultural and historical context. His lecture and staged conversation offers audiences profound reflections on art as a tool for survival, how language shapes belonging, and the universal human desire for transcendence. Born in Tehran and raised in the Midwest, Akbar is the Roy J. Carver Professor of English at the University of Iowa.