Hera Naguib

Why FSU?

I chose to pursue a degree at FSU because its PhD program in Creative Writing is one of the best in the country. It also has excellent faculty and academic support for its students. Tallahassee's weather is a bonus.

Motivation to pursue a graduate degree

I wanted to have the time and support to single-mindedly write my first book. I was also looking to build a community of writers who shared my goal of building a career, from reading, writing, and teaching literature. A graduate career would help me build my writing and teaching career by training me in the skills to compete in the literary and academic market.

Importance and/or impact of research and work

I write poems that are inspired by my personal journey of migration throughout my life. My work focuses on the importance of building cross-cultural affinities. I offer a unique hybrid voice that resists the binding prescriptions of national and cultural identities of the places I have inhabited. Therefore, my writing encourages me to assert a multicultural perspective that is a vital contribution to the body of world literature that is ever diversifying the landscape of American poetry from the canon.

Career aspirations

As a writer, I aspire to write beautiful and conscious works of literature. As an aspiring academic, I want to evoke in students the capacity for literature to transform the human condition. As an editor, I want to create spaces and opportunities for culturally diverse voices.

Advice for anyone considering graduate school

As an international graduate student, I would urge others to mobilize and build community as early as you join graduate school. The quicker one develops a sense of belonging, the easier it is to thrive. At the same time, stay in conversation with folks two or three years ahead of you to get a sense of how the journey has panned out for others and the choices you want to make in the foreseeable future. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic and the dwindling job market fears taught me that it's important to consider other (possibly related) skills you can develop during the course of your degree, in case your career plans don't come through.

Accomplishments during graduate career

I received a couple of scholarships and fellowships: Fulbright Foreign Student Program (2012-2014); Vida Residency Fellowship in 2017; William Lee Pryor English Scholarship, Department of English, FSU; and May Alexander Ryburn Graduate Fellowship, Department of English, FSU. I was a Finalist for the 2022 Palette Poetry Prize and I received Honorable Mention for the John Mackay Shaw Academy of American Poets Award.