THE BEE KINGDOM
Forthcoming from Gaudy Boy, December 2026
“Absolutely unique.” – Dale Peck.
The Bee Kingdom is a memoir by Joy Amina Garnett. A saga of modern beekeeping, Arabic poetry, lost loves, and found archives, it follows the author’s search for her late maternal grandfather, Dr. Ahmed Zaky Abushady, an Egyptian polymath, poet, physician, beekeeper, and a central figure of 20th century Arabic poetry. The story weaves together the author’s personal memories and conversations with scholarly research and histories both real and imagined. Garnett was awarded a writing fellowship at Yaddo to work on The Bee Kingdom, an advance excerpt of which was Longlisted for the 2024 First Pages Prize in Creative Nonfiction.
Dr. Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892-1955) was an Egyptian romantic poet, publisher, scientist, physician, and beekeeper whose life was steeped in controversy. A polymath who worked against the grain, he became notorious for his experimental, European-inflected romantic poetry, and for founding the influential Arabic poetry magazine, Apollo, which challenged the literary conventions of his time. Abushady set sail from Alexandria with his family at the close of World War II under mysterious circumstances to start a new life in New York, and died in relative obscurity in Washington, DC.
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Joy Amina Garnett 
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