Saif al-Rahbi (born 1956) is an Omani poet, essayist and writer. [1] He was born in Oman in a village called Suroor. In 1970, while he was still in his early teens, al-Rahbi was sent to school in Cairo. Afterwards, he lived and worked abroad for many years, in Cairo, Damascus, Algeria, Paris and London among others. [2]
Al-Rahbi's third poetry collection The Bells of Rapture (1985) marked his arrival as an important new voice in Arabic poetry. At the time he was living in Paris. Eventually, he returned to Oman and established Nizwa , Oman's leading quarterly cultural magazine. Currently, he is editor-in-chief of the magazine.
Al-Rahbi has published several books of poetry and prose till date. His work has appeared in Banipal magazine, where he also serves as a consulting editor. He was on the judging panel of the 2010 Arabic Booker Prize, and he was also a judge of Beirut39, a competition held in 2009-10 to identify the most promising young Arab writers.
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.
Fadhil Al Azzawi is an Iraqi writer highly respected in the Arab world, as he has published ten volumes of poetry, six novels, three books of criticism and memoir, and several translations of German literary works. He participated in Iraq's avant-garde Sixties Generation, and his early controversial work was lauded with great enthusiasm.
Anton Shammas, is a Palestinian writer, poet and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English.
Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He works as an Assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, where he currently lives and writes.
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 has worked for decades in the Arab world and been based in Cairo since the late 20th century. He has translated at least 18 Arabic works into English, including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.
Ali al-Muqri is a Yemeni novelist and writer. Two of hisnovels - Black Taste, Black Odour and The Handsome Jew - have been long-listed for the Arab Booker Prize. He has also been awarded the French Prize for Arabic Literature for his novel Ḥurma, translated into French by Khaled Osman and Ola Mehanna.
Beirut39 is a collaborative project between the Hay Festival, Beirut UNESCO's World Book Capital 2009 celebrations, Banipal magazine and the British Council among others in order to identify 39 of the most promising Arab writers under the age of 39. The project was carried out during 2009-10 and followed on the success of Bogotá39, an earlier contest held in 2007 to identify the most promising young Latin American writers. In connection with Port Harcourt being World Book Capital 2014, Africa39 was launched by Hay Festival, featuring 39 writers under the age of 40 from sub-Saharan Africa.
Yahya Taher Abdullah was an Egyptian writer.
Edwar al-Kharrat was an Egyptian novelist, writer and critic.
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.
Paul Starkey is a British scholar and translator of Arabic literature.
Nariman Youssef is an Egyptian translator. She obtained a BSc in computer science from the American University in Cairo before moving to the UK for graduate studies. She has master's degrees from Birkbeck College and the University of Edinburgh, and is currently a doctoral candidate at Manchester University. She is affiliated with CASAW.
Mahmoud al-Rimawy is a Palestinian journalist and author.
Abbas Beydoun is a Lebanese poet, novelist and journalist. He was born in the village of Sur near Tyre in southern Lebanon. His father was a teacher. Beydoun studied at the Lebanese University in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris. He was involved in left-wing politics and spent time in jail as a young man in 1968 and 1982.
Jokha Alharthi also spelt al-Harthi, is an Omani writer and academic, known for winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 for her novel Sayyidat al-Qamar, published in English under the title Celestial Bodies. She has written four novels in Arabic, two of which have been translated into English.
Mohamed Mustagab (1938–2006) was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer.
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.
Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian writer. His work explores language and identity in the context of Cairo, and reflects connections with the Arab-Islamic canon and world literature. He has worked in many genres in both Arabic and English, and is known for his essays and poems as well as his novels.
Najlaa Osman Eltom is a Sudanese writer, poet and translator writing in Arabic. She also has translated short stories by other Sudanese literary writers into English. Since 2012, she has been living in Sweden.