Kareem has received numerous awards, fellowships, honors, and residencies for his work as a translator and a scholar, including PEN Center USA's 2017 Translation Prize, the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts translation grant, the 2015 Northern California Book Award for Best Translated Poetry, Poetry Magazine's 2014 translation prize, a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Germany, a CASA Fellowship in Cairo, and residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He has also twice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize: once for poetry (2022) and once for prose (2017). 

Translation Awards

• 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation: Finalist 

• 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation: Winner

• 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry: Shortlist

• 2022 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation: Finalist​

• 2022 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry: Shortlist​

• 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Grant Recipient: $25,000

• 2018: Joint Recipient, PEN Translates Award, UK (Book of Cairo)

• 2017 PEN Center USA Translation Prize (Fiction): Winner

• ​2017 PEN America Translation Prize (Fiction): Finalist

• ​2015 Northern California Book Award (Best Translated Poetry): Winner ​

• 2015 National Translation Award (Poetry) : Longlist   

• 2015 Best Translated Book Award (Poetry): Longlist  

• 2015: Joint Recipient, PEN Translates Award, UK (Book of Khartoum)

• 2014 Poetry Magazine Prize for Translation: Winner  ​

• 2014 Northern California Book Award (Best Translated Prose): Finalist

• 2010 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literature in Translation: Runner-Up 

Translation Residencies

• 2014: Lannan Foundation Residency in Marfa, Texas 

• 2012: Banff International Literary Translation Center residency in Alberta, Canada

Translation Service

• 2024: BIPOC Open-Language Translation Mentor for the American Literary Translators Association. Mentee: Munawwar Abdulla, working with modern Uyghur fiction.
  

• 2023: Mentor for the Yiddish Book Center. Mentee: Daniel Kraft, working with 20th-century Yiddish poetry.

• 2022: Open-Language Translation Mentor for the American Literary Translators Association. Mentee: Priyamvada Ramkumar, working with contemporary Tamil fiction. 

• 2022: Member of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Advisory Board. 

• 2022: Advisor and consultant for the Room to Read international literacy organization. 

• 2021-2022: Mentor for the Ireland-based "Play It Forward" Fellowship Programme, in conjunction with Skein Press. Mentee: Iraqi-born poet Majed Mujed. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.

• 2021: Open-Language Translation Mentor for the American Literary Translators Association. Mentee: Alex Braslavsky, working with modern Polish poetry. 

• 2021: Member of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Advisory Board. 

• 2020: Open-Genre Arabic Translation Mentor for the American Literary Translators Association. Mentee: Madeline Edwards, working with contemporary Arabic prose.

• 2018/19: Open-Language Translation Mentor for the American Literary Translators Association. Mentee: Dr. Jennifer Kellogg, working with modern Greek poetry. 

• 2018: Judge for the National Translation Award in Poetry  ​

Research Awards and Fellowships

• ​​2013: Center for Middle Eastern Studies Sultan Grant, UC Berkeley (research in Arabic and Islamic Studies)  

• 2006 – 2011: Berkeley Fellowship (the top graduate humanities fellowship at UC Berkeley) 

• 2006 – 2009: Townsend Center Discovery Fellowship (interdisciplinary research at UC Berkeley)

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• 2005/6: CASA Fellowship at the American University in Cairo, Egypt (Arabic studies)

 

• 2003/4: Fulbright Fellowship for research in Mannheim, Germany

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• 2003/4: Fulbright Enterprise Fellowship for research in Mannheim, Germany 

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• 2003/4: DAAD Fellowship for research in Germany (declined in favor of the Fulbright)  ​​

• 2003: Inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honors Society

 

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