Reviews
"But it is precisely this ability, Awad’s comfort working within liminal fields and figures, that underscores the collection’s virtue. Rather than reiterate Hannah Arendt’s now-ubiquitous phrase (“the banality of evil”), the collection underscores the banality of living with evil, of living through evil, even after evil itself has become unrecognizable, if ever it was: how to weigh suffering alongside suffering? Is quotidian desire any less potent than its absolutist corollary? Life’s minutia doesn’t disappear when the shells first fall, so where does one place pleasure amongst the war-scape?"—J.P. Grasser, Kenyon Review
"At its best, Ruth Awad’s Set to Music a Wildfire further convinces me poetry, among many things, is a living testament to both art’s unique ability to arise—and our need for art to arise—from suffering and tragedy."—Mike Good, Tupelo Quarterly
"Set to Music a Wildfire shows what it is to survive, to be as whole as possible, to claim a solid self."—Tyler Robert Sheldon, The Los Angeles Review
"Set to Music a Wildfire details Awad’s father’s journey to America in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War, his tempestuous marriage to and divorce from Awad’s mother, and the heartbreak this separation inflicts on the family. However, though this collection is a testament to a father, and at times a dedicated investigational report of a war-torn country, Set to Music a Wildfire is also a powerful work of self recovery. Awad’s speaker traces her lineage, the circumstances that made her existence possible, as gently as a finger gliding along the spine of a slumbering body. " —Enikő Vághy
"Set to Music a Wild Fire is a story that needs to be told, especially today, now, reminding us of those lines from “Asphodel” by William Carlos Williams: “it is difficult to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” Awad’s poems give us real news of human beings behind the current wall of political wrangling, and behind the question of who belongs and who doesn’t."—Amy Small-McKinney, Connotation Press
Interviews
Sentinel-Tribune, BGSU ‘arts from home’ features poet, October 2020
BG Independent News, Ruth Awad to share poems touched by war, loss, & love in virtual reading as part of BGSU virtual arts series, September 2020
Kenyon Review, KR Podcast with Ruth Awad, July 2020
Columbus Alive, Things We Love: Picks from Ruth Awad, November 2019
Words Without Borders, The City and the Writer: In Tripoli, Lebanon with Ruth Awad, May 2019
WOSU, Columbus Poet Calls For Diversity Panel At Ohioana Book Festival, April 2019
Columbus Alive, Arts preview: Ruth Awad at Ohioana Book Festival, April 2018
Flypaper Magazine, Q&A with Ruth Awad, February 2018
Bad Binch Interview Series, January 2018
Cosmonauts Avenue, Tiny Spills, December 2017
WOUB, Talking Dogs and Poetry With Writer Ruth Awad, October 2017
The Adroit Journal, A Conversation with Ruth Awad, October 2017
The Best Poems Break Your Heart: An Interview with Ruth Awad by Emilia Phillips, September 2017
VIDA, Voices of Bettering American Poetry, August 2017
Columbus Alive, Locals: Musicians and poets merge onstage, January 2016
Howlarium: When is songwriting poetry? September 2016
Interview with John Hoppenthaler in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, July 2016
Interview with Darren C. Demaree for CookBook, June 2015
Geosi Reads: Interview with Award Winning Poet and Tattoo Artist, Ruth Awad, October 2014
Features & News
Columbus Dispatch, Arts Feature: Columbus poet Ruth Awad shares experience with hair loss, grief in new collections, August 2023
Columbus Dispatch, Ohio art organizations, poets awarded $650,000 in federal grants for future projects, February 2021
Columbus Alive, ‘Rhapsody & Refrain: 30 Columbus Poets’ starts this weekend, August 2019
Columbus Dispatch, Two central Ohioans among Ohioana winners, July 2018
University of Southern Indiana, Awad named 2018 Ohioana Awards poetry winner, July 2018
Poetry Society of America, In Their Own Words, November 2017
Poem of the Week, October 2017
Featured work in Mayday Issue 12, January 2017
Author Feature in Shantih 2.2, January 2017
Writer of the Week, Maudlin House, March 2017
Featured in Tattooed Poets Project, February 2016
Featured Poet in Atticus Review, February 2016
Prizes
2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship
Recipient of the 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Poetry
Winner of the 2018 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry
Recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in poetry, May 2016
Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizewinner, 2013 and 2012
Southern Illinois University Carbondale: Alumni Association Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award, 2012
Copper Nickel Poetry Contest winner, 2011
Academy of American Poets Prize, 2012
Southern Illinois University Carbondale: Roxana Rivera Poetry Contest Winner, 2011
The Ohio State University: Citino Undergraduate Poetry Award, 2009
The Ohio State University: Reba Elaine Pearl Burkhardt Roorbach Award in Creative Nonfiction, 2009
The Ohio State University: Gertrude Lucille Robinson Award, 2009
The Ohio State University: Vandewater Poetry Award, 2009
Academy of American Poets: Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, 2008
A Year in Reading: Kaveh Akbar, The Millions, December 2017
SPD Poetry Bestsellers, October 2017
SPD Poetry Bestsellers, December 2017