Naomi Shihab Nye (born in St. Louis, Missouri) is a poet of Palestinian-American heritage whose work celebrates cultural connections, the ordinary lives of people across boundaries, and the healing power of attention and language. She has served as Young People's Poet Laureate for the Poetry Foundation and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her collections include Fuel (BOA Editions, 1998), 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002), a finalist for the National Book Award, and The Tiny Journalist (BOA, 2019). She has received four Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Prize, and numerous awards for her children's and young adult writing.