Tayeb Salih was a Sudanese writer, cultural journalist for the BBC Arabic programme as well as for Arabic journals, and a staff member of UNESCO. He is best known for his novel Season of Migration to the North, considered to be one of the most important novels in Arabic literature. His novels and short stories have been translated into English and more than a dozen other languages.
Sudanese literature consists of both oral as well as written works of fiction and nonfiction that were created during the cultural history of today's Republic of the Sudan. This includes the territory of what was once Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the independent country's history since 1956 as well as its changing geographical scope in the 21st century.
Malkat al-Dar Mohamed Abdullah, also spelled as Malikah ad-Dar, was a Sudanese literary writer, educator and women's rights activist. Her novel written in the 1950s, "Al-Faragh al-'arid", has been characterized as the first Sudanese novel in the style of social realism. Sudanese literary critic Lemya Shammat called her "a pioneer of the literary feminist renaissance and a woman of spirit and courage."
Amir Tag Elsir, also written Amir Taj al-Sir, is a Sudanese medical doctor and novelist, writing in Arabic. He has published more than 20 works of poetry, biography and novels, some of these translated into English or other languages. His novels deal with contemporary social issues, like poverty, the lives of refugees or diseases, such as Ebola.
Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature is an Arabic literary award for children's literature. It was established in 2009 by the Arab Children's Book Publisher’s Forum. It is sponsored by Her Excellency Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, President of UAEBBY. Organization of the prize was handed over to UAEBBY in 2010. The award is announced each year during the Sharjah International Book Fair.
Fawwaz Haddad is a Syrian novelist.
Fadi Azzam is a Syrian novelist and poet. Two of his novels in Arabic have been longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. In 2011, his debut novel Sarmada was published in English and in 2020 in a German edition. After the outbreak of the war in Syria, he went into exile in the United Kingdom. His work is part of contemporary Syrian literature in the context of war and imprisonment.
Alexandra Chreiteh ألكسندرا شريتح is a Lebanese author known for her portrayal of the barriers faced by Arab women.
Hammour Ziada is a Sudanese writer and journalist, born in Omdurman. He has worked as a civil society and human rights researcher, and currently works as journalist in Cairo. Before, he had been writing for a number of left-wing newspapers in Sudan. Two of his novels were selected for Arabic literary awards and appeared in English translations.
Rasha Abbas is a Syrian writer and journalist, best known for The Invention of German Grammar, a collection of short stories in Arabic about her experience as a refugee in Germany. She was a winner of the young writers' award at the 2008 Arab Capital of Culture.
Haji Jabir is an Eritrean novelist and journalist. He was born in the city of Massawa on the Red Sea coast. Writing in Arabic, he has published five novels until 2021. With the nomination of Black Foam (2018), Jabir became the first Eritrean novelist to be longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Stella Gaitano is a literary writer, activist and former pharmacist from South Sudan. She is known for her stories, often dealing with the harsh living conditions of people from southern Sudan, who have endured discrimination and military dictatorship, war and displacement in the northern part of Sudan. Since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, she has also published short stories about life in her new nation.
Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin is a Sudanese fiction writer with roots in Darfur in western Sudan, whose literary work was banned in Sudan in 2011. Since 2012, he has lived in exile in Austria and later in France. He is mostly known for his novels The Messiah of Darfur and The Jungo, translated from the original Arabic into French, English, Spanish and German.
Sonia Nimr is a Palestinian writer, storyteller, translator, ethnographer and academic. She writes for children and youth in Arabic and English, and relates folk-tales in colloquial Arabic. She is the winner of the 2014 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children's Literature for Best Young Adult Book for her book Extraordinary Journeys to Unknown Places. Nimr is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University.
Mohammed Said Hjiouij Sahli is a Moroccan novelist and blogger. He is known for his short novel By Night In Tangier, which won the inaugural Ismail Fahd Ismail Prize, and his book ABC of Blogging . He is the founder of Zajil tech blog and Arabisk award, and was head of the Moroccan Center of Modern Technology.
Sania Saleh was a Syrian writer and poet, who wrote and published several poetry collections. Some of her poetry has been translated into English by Marilyn Hacker.
Malika Moustadraf was a Moroccan Arabic-language writer. She is best known for her pioneering short stories and women's rights activism, which set her squarely in Morocco's feminist vanguard. Before her early death at age 37, she published a novel, Jirah al-ruh wa-l-jasad, and the story collection Trente-Six.
Adil Babikir is a Sudanese literary critic and translator into and out of English and Arabic. He has translated several novels, short stories and poems by renowned Sudanese writers and edited the anthology Modern Sudanese Poetry. He lives and works in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Sheikha Helawy is a Palestinian writer and poet born into a Bedouin family in the village Dhail El E’rj, in the outskirts of Haifa. In 1989, she moved with her family to Jaffa. She is known as a prominent writer of Palestinian literature.
Yasmine Seale is a British-Syrian writer and literary translator who works in English, Arabic, and French. Her translated works include The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights and Aladdin: A New Translation. She is the first woman to translate the entirety of The Arabian Nights from French and Arabic into English. In 2020, she received the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry.
