Three University of Iowa faculty members — Kaveh Akbar, Jamel Brinkley, and Charles D’Ambrosio — were recognized with 2025 Awards in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The awards honor the work of both emerging and established writers and will be presented to awardees at a ceremony in May. 

The 300-member American Academy of Arts and Letters selected the nominees, with 17 winners ultimately chosen. The academy is an honor society comprising artists, architects, composers, and writers who foster and sustain interest in the arts.

Akbar, associate professor and director of the English and Creative Writing major, was awarded the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, which is given to a novel published the preceding year. 

Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, was published in January 2024, landing on the New York Times Best Seller list and Top 10 Books of 2024. The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Akbar has also published poetry, including the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, and his full-length collections, Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell. 

Brinkley, assistant professor in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was awarded the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award, a $20,000 prize given for exceptional prose style.

Brinkley’s 2023 short story collection, Witness: Stories, was the winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, as well as a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Kirkus Prize in Fiction, and Aspen Words Literary Prize. He previously was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for A Lucky Man. 

D’Ambrosio, professor in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was given the Award of Merit Medal for the Short Story and its prize of $25,000 for outstanding achievement in the genre. 

D’Ambrosio has two books of fiction: The Point and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award; and The Dead Fish Museum, which was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. He also has two collections of essays, Orphans and Loitering: New and Collected Essays. Many of his stories originally appeared in The New Yorker.