He studied French and German language and literature at Princeton University, taking translation workshops under poets CK Williams and Paul Muldoon, and graduating summa cum laude in 2003.
He obtained a master's degree and a PhD in comparative literature from UC Berkeley, with a dissertation focusing on modern poetry as spiritual practice.
Following his PhD, he resumed a nomadic lifestyle for several more years, spending significant periods of time in southern India, before finally settling in New Mexico.
Abu-Zeid has the following books to his name: He contributes regularly to literary journals and websites such as Words Without Borders, Guernica, and Three Percent.
He has received a National Endowment for the Arts translation grant, literary residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff Centre for the Arts, as well as Poetry magazine's 2014 translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and Fulbright Enterprise Scholarship in 2003/04 in Germany, and a CASA Fellowship at the American University in Cairo.