Ayad Akhtar (USA)

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages.

As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). His play *MCNEAL* premiered in autumn 2024 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Centre. In German-speaking countries, Joachim Meyerhoff at the Burgtheater in Vienna and Ulrich Matthes at the Deutsches Theater Berlin played the eponymous lead character.

Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which was called “a masterpiece” (Publisher’s Weekly) and “a tour de force” (The Washington Post) and selected by The New York Times as one of its ten best books of the year. His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. His third novel, Radiance, is published in September 2026, with the German edition following in spring 2027.

Among other honors, Akhtar has received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN America, where he served as President from 2020 – 2023. In 2021, Akhtar was named the New York State Author, succeeding Colson Whitehead, by the New York State Writers Institute.