Haji Jabir (born 1976) 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. [1]
Jaber’s literary work deals with the past and present of Eritrea, its diaspora and the wider Horn of Africa. His novel Black Foam, based on real events, tells the fictional story of a group of Ethiopian Jews, who emigrate to Israel to escape poverty and in search of a better life. [2] In 2023, it was published in an English translation by Sawad Hussain and Marcia Lynx Qualey. [2]
Jaber lives in Doha, Qatar, and works as a journalist for Al Jazeera. He has also taught courses for creative writing at the Al Jazeera Media Institute. [3] In an interview with ArabLit magazine, he said:
I write about the people of my country, because they are a persecuted and suffering people, and so my novels come in this manner. I would like to write far from politics, but I would betray these people if I turned away from their issues. In Eritrea, we are still living outside history, enslaved to an oppressive regime in various forms, and all of this is considered the meaning of “homeland,” which is innocent.
— Haji Jaber, Eritrean writer, [4]
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.
Alia Mamdouh is an Iraqi novelist, author, and journalist living in exile in Paris, France.
Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and journalist.
Rabee Jaber is a Lebanese novelist and journalist.
May Telmissany is an Egyptian-Canadian novelist, translator, film critic and academic. She teaches Arabic studies and cinema at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Jabbour Douaihy was a critically-acclaimed Lebanese writer, translator, and professor of literature. His novels were nominated four times for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and he has also published translations, short story collections, and children's books. His work, mostly originally in Arabic, has been translated several languages, including English and French.
Fawwaz Haddad is a Syrian novelist.
Mansour El Souwaim is a Sudanese writer and journalist. He has published both novels and short stories. He was invited to join the first IPAF Nadwa as well as the Beirut39 young Arab writers project, and has received international recognition through translations of his novels into English and French.
Maha Hassan is a Syrian-Kurdish journalist and novelist. A native Kurdish speaker, she writes in Arabic. In 2000, she was banned from publishing in Syria for her "morally condemnable" writing, and since August 2004, she has been living in exile in Paris.
Mohammed Hasan Alwan is a Saudi Arabian novelist. He was born in Riyadh and studied Computer Information Systems at King Saud University, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 2002. He also obtained an MBA from the University of Portland, Oregon in 2008 and Ph.D from Carleton University, Ottawa in 2016.
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.
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.
Shahla Ujayli is a Syrian fiction writer and academic. A laureate of the Al Multaqa Prize for Arabic short stories, she became notable for her short story collection A Bed for the King’s Daughter and for her novels Summer with the Enemy and A Sky Close to Our House. Some of her works have been translated into English and German. Her work is part of contemporary Syrian literature in the context of imprisonment, war and exile.
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.
Golan Haji is a Syrian Kurdish writer, poet, and translator. He has published five poetry collections in Arabic, including He Called Out Within The Darknesses, which won the first prize in the Muhammad Al-Maghout Poetry Competition in 2006. He has translated several books from English into Arabic such as Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata and Dark Harbor by Mark Strand. Some of his works are part of Syrian literature in the context of war.
Bothayna El Essa is a novelist from Kuwait. A well-known author in modern Arabic literature, her novel The Book Censor's Library was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in their category for translated literature.
ArabLit is an online magazine for information about translations of Arabic literature into English. The editors also publish ArabLit Quarterly as a print and electronic magazine, books with selected contemporary Arabic literary works and a daily newsletter about current publications of different genres of Arabic literature in English translation. Further, ArabLit's promotion of Arabic literature in English has been distinguished by British and Canadian literary awards.
Rima Bali is a Syrian writer of contemporary Arabic fiction. The author of four novels, she is mostly known for having been shortlisted for the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) based in Abu Dhabi and mentored by the Booker Prize Foundation in London.
Badriya al-Badri is an Omani author. She was born in Muscat in 1975.
Sawad Hussain is a writer and translator of contemporary Arabic literature into English, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She is known for her award-winning translations, as lecturer and speaker on the field of literary translation and for her contributions to contemporary Arabic literature in English-language publications.