Leilah Nadir is a Canadian novelist and writer. [1]
She was born to an Iraqi father and an English mother, and she was raised in Britain and Canada. [2] Nadir holds a master's degree in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, and also a Joint Honours bachelor's degree in English and History from McGill University.
Nadir has previously worked in both London and Vancouver in the publishing industry. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, she has written numerous articles and broadcast political commentaries for CBC, The Globe and Mail, The Georgia Straight, and she has also published a feature article in Brick magazine. In September 2007, she published The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family (Key Porter Books), which details her Iraqi father's story and her Iraqi family's experiences since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The book includes family photographs as well as contemporary photos by acclaimed Iraqi Canadian photojournalist Farah Nosh; it was widely praised on publication, notably by Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky. In July 2008, she won the George Ryga award for Social Awareness in Literature. The Orange Trees of Baghdad was published in Canada, Italy, Australia and New Zealand, France, Turkey, the UK Commonwealth and the USA. The book was published in Baghdad, Iraq in Arabic in 2022 by Qarrat Publishers. Nadir currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband, son and daughter. [3]
Åsne Seierstad is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writer, best known for her accounts of everyday life in war zones – most notably Kabul after 2001, Baghdad in 2002 and the ruined Grozny in 2006.
Joy Nozomi Kogawa is a Canadian poet and novelist of Japanese descent.
Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM, is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Emily Pauline Johnson, also known by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake, was a Canadian poet, author, and performer who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her father was a hereditary Mohawk chief of mixed ancestry and her mother was an English immigrant.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Kathleen Margaret "Kit" Pearson is a Canadian writer and winner of numerous literature awards. Pearson is perhaps best known for her linked novels The Sky Is Falling (1989), Looking at the Moon (1991), and The Lights Go on Again (1993), published in 1999 as The Guests of War Trilogy, and Awake and Dreaming (1996), which won the 1997 Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature. She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2019.
Nuha al-Radi was an Iraqi diarist, ceramicist and painter and noted author of the Baghdad Diaries which vividly recounts the horror of living through the first Gulf War.
Nazik al-Malaika was an Iraqi poet. Al-Malaika is noted for being among the first Arabic poets to use free verse.
Alia Mamdouh is an Iraqi novelist, author, and journalist living in exile in Paris, France.
Daisy Al-Amir, often referred to as simply Dayzi Amir, is an Iraqi writer, poet and novelist. She is author of The Waiting List: An Iraqi Woman's Tales of Alienation has renowned her as one of the leading female writers of Iraq.
Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi was a prominent Iraqi poet and philosopher. He is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary poets of the Arab world and was known for his defence of women's rights.
Sharanjit Leyl is a Singaporean former producer/presenter, for the BBC. She regularly anchored Asia Business Report and Newsday on BBC One, the BBC News Channel and BBC World News from the BBC's Singapore studio. She was also a reporter and producer on the shows along with World Business Report. She has filed reports for radio on the BBC World Service business programmes as well as its arts and culture programmes, and written for BBC news online.
Jacqueline Jill Robinson is a Canadian writer and editor. She is the author of a novel and four collections of short stories. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals including Geist, the Antigonish Review, Event, Prairie Fire and the Windsor Review. Her novel, More In Anger, published in 2012, tells the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters who bear the emotional scars of loveless marriages, corrosive anger and misogyny.
Elisabeth Nicole Calder is an English publisher and book editor.
Shahad Al Rawi is an Iraqi author, Anthropologist, and novelist. She was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Her debut novel The Baghdad Clock (2016) was nominated for the Arabic Booker Prize and was shortlisted, marking herself the youngest author to reach the list at that time. It has also been translated into more than 20 languages. The Baghdad Clock then went onto win the First Book Award at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Amira Nur al-Din Daoud was an Iraqi poet. Born in Baghdad. After completing her secondary education, she joined Fuad I University in Cairo in 1943, and BA in Arabic Language and Literature in 1947, and a master's degree from the same university in 1957. She worked as a teacher of Arabic in secondary schools, then at the Faculty of Arts of Baghdad, then dean of the Institute of Applied Arts. Published her poetry in many Iraqi and Arab magazines and newspapers.
Nawal Nasrallah is a U.S.-based Iraqi food writer, food historian, English literature scholar, and translator from Arabic into English. She is best known for her cookbook featuring Iraqi cuisine, entitled Delights from the Garden of Eden, and for editions of medieval Arabic cookbooks, including Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, an annotated translation of the tenth-century, Abbasid-era cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. She has won numerous awards for her writing and her translations.
Mawj Aldarraji is an Iraqi mountaineer and an architect. She is widely regarded as the first female mountaineer from Iraq. Currently working through the seven summits challenge, she appears frequently in Arab media as a discussant of female empowerment and women's rights.
Youssef Izz al-Din Ahmad al-Samarrai was an Iraqi poet and university professor. He was born and studied in the city of Baqubah. He worked as a primary teacher at the Primary Teacher's House, then joined the Faculty of Arts at Alexandria University where he obtained a BA in Arabic language and literature. Youssef Izz al-din has continued his studies there, receiving a master's degree, then a doctorate from the University of London. He was appointed as a teacher of modern Arabic literature at the College of Arts at the University of Baghdad. He was assigned to the iraqi scientific academy in 1961, then a general director of guidance at the ministry of culture. He was a member of the royal society of literature in London, and the scientific academy in Cairo, Damascus, Jordan, and Iraq. He has many poetry collections and a large number of books, studies and lectures that he delivered. He died in Britain.