Photo by Marcel Vocino

David Larsen (he, him, his) is a US poet and verse translator specializing in classical Arabic literature. At U. C. Berkeley he studied Comparative Literature, and at NYU he teaches in Liberal Studies. His translation of the Names of the Lion by Ibn Khalawayh (Wave Books, 2017) received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and his translation of the Book of Rain of Abu Zayd al-Ansari is forthcoming (also from Wave). Currently, he is at work on a bilingual edition of the collected poetry of Jamil Buthayna, for which he was awarded the NEA's Translation fellowship in 2025.