Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet and the author of two previous full-length collections of poetry – Louder than Hearts and To Live in Autumn – and the chapbooks 3arabi Song and There Was and How Much There Was. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is also the co-creator and co-host with poet Farah Chamma of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry produced by Sowt. Educated in Arabic, English, and French, she has a bachelor’s degree and an M.A. in English literature from the American University of Beirut. In O (Penguin Books), Hashem Beck writes at the intersection of the divine and the profane. There she crafts elegant, candid poems that simultaneously exude a boundless curiosity and a deep knowingness. Formally electrifying – from lyrics and triptychs to ghazals and duets, in which English and Arabic echo and contradict each other – O explores the limits of language, notions of home and exile, and stirring visions of motherhood, memory, and faith.