Kaveh Akbar has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes for his poetry, and his collection Pilgrim Bell was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, on BBC Radio 4's Start The Week and Front Row, on The New Yorker's Radio Hour, and in The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. His debut novel Martyr! was a New York Times bestseller and a most anticipated book in 2024 for Time, Nylon, Oprah, Marie Claire and CNN.