Tariq
Luthun.

Tariq Luthun is a Detroit-born, Dearborn-raised community organizer, data consultant, and Emmy Award-winning poet. The son of Palestinian Muslim immigrants from Gaza, he is a Kresge Arts in Detroit fellow, and was awarded the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.

Luthun earned his MFA in Poetry from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His poetry has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, and has earned him such honors as being awarded Editors' Selection by Bull City Press and having been named Best of the Net by Sundress Publications. Additionally, he's been awarded multiple residencies and fellowships through spaces like the Banff Centre for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, and more.

Luthun has served as a community director, a board member, an editor, and an officer at various literary organizations and community non-profits. Whether its leading the SWANA Writers Caucus or serving as Vice President and Treasurer of the Offing Literary Magazine, Luthun leverages his roles to help build partnerships and craft programs, politics, and procedures in every space he enters. Most recently, he worked with a community of writers and workers to successfully reclaim a prestigious literary home, winning a legal settlement for anti-Palestinian discrimination and wrongful termination — furthering the sequence of precedents being secured in service of a more liberated front.

Since the events of Al-Aqsa Flood, Tariq has pivoted away from the literary space to spend his time focusing on local grassroots initiatives dedicated to anti-imperialism, disability justice, and workers' rights. His work has afforded him the honor of sharing stages with the likes of Kehlani, Cornel West, Hanif Abdurraqib, Omar Offendum, Theaster Gates, and more. His first collection of poetry, How The Water Holds Me, is available now.