Pascale Petit, is a French-born British poet of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. She was born in Paris and grew up in France and Wales. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. She has travelled widely, particularly in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon and India.
Ahlam Mosteghanemi is an Algerian poet and writer. She was the first Algerian woman to write poetry and fiction in Arabic. She has published four novels and six anthologies, and is best known for her 1993 novel Memory of the Flesh. In 2007 and 2008, she was ranked #96 and #58 respectively as the most influential Arab by the Arabian Business magazine.
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.
Tishani Doshi FRSL is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. In 2006 she won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection due to Countries of the Body. Her poetry book A God at the Door was later shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.
Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist. She lived most of her early life in Beirut before moving to Paris, where she now resides. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories, and a book of memoirs. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, and Greek.
Amina Said, also spelled Amina Saïd is a Tunisian author and poet. Her father is Tunisian and her mother is French. Said has been living in Paris since 1978, where she studied literature at the Sorbonne. She has published several books of poetry, Tunisian folk stories, short stories and essays. Much of her work has been translated into other languages, mainly Arabic, German, Turkish, English and Italian. Said has translated works by the Filipino writer Francisco Sionil José from English into French.
Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and journalist.
Humphrey T. Davies was a British translator of Arabic fiction, historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain, he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He worked for decades in the Arab world and was based in Cairo from the late 20th century to 2021. He translated at least 18 Arabic works into English, including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.
Marilyn Louise Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Issa J. Boullata was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
Habib Selmi is a Tunisian novelist and short story writer.
Dima Wannous is a Syrian literary writer and journalist. She studied French literature at Damascus University and the University of Paris - Sorbonne. She also studied translation in France and has lived in Beirut, where she worked for the newspapers Al-Hayat and As-Safir. She has also worked for broadcast media.
Margaret Obank is a British publisher, noted for her contribution to the dissemination of contemporary Arabic literature in English translation.
Maia Tabet is an Arabic-English literary translator with a background in editing and journalism. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1956, she was raised in Lebanon, India, and England. She studied philosophy and political science at the American University in Beirut and lives between the United States and Cyprus.
Sara al-Jarwan is an Emirati novelist, short story writer and playwright. Born in Ajman, she joined the UAE armed forces as a soldier just before the 1991 Gulf War. This experience was the basis of a book as well as a play. She also served as an editor of Dara al-Watan, the magazine of the armed forces.
Ghalia Qabbani is a Syrian writer and journalist. She grew up in Kuwait, but was forced to leave after the Iraqi invasion in 1990.
Maya Jaggi is a British writer, literary critic, editor and cultural journalist. In the words of the Open University, from which Jaggi received an honorary doctorate in 2012, she "has had a transformative influence in the last 25 years in extending the map of international writing today". Jaggi has been a contributor to a wide range of publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, New Statesman, Wasafiri, Index on Censorship, and Newsweek, and is particularly known for her profiles of writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and others. She is also a broadcaster and presenter on radio and television. Jaggi is the niece of actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey.
Lamia Makaddam is a Tunisian poet, journalist and translator.
Rachida el-Charni is a Tunisian writer. She has published three collections of short stories and one novel. Her short story 'Street of the House of Wonders' was in Habila Helon's The Granta Book of the African Short Story - a collection of short stories from prominent African writers, including Chimamanda Adichie, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Doreen Baingana, Henrietta Rose-Innes, E. C. Osondu, Alex La Guma and Camara Laye among others.
Mazen Marrouf is a Palestinian-Icelandic writer, translator, journalist and poet, born in 1978. He has more than five publications, and translated many novels from Icelandic into Arabic including the novels of several Icelandic writers. In 2019, his short story Jokes for the Gunmen was long-listed the Man Booker International Prize. Some of his poetry works and novels have been translated into many languages including English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
