Ali Ahmad Said Esber, also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world.
Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet, writer and publisher. He is considered to be Syria's National Poet. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, religion, and Arab empowerment against foreign imperialism and local dictators. Qabbani is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world. His famous relatives include Abu Khalil Qabbani, Sabah Qabbani, Rana Kabbani, Yasmine Seale.
Bei Dao is the pen name of the Chinese-American writer Zhao Zhenkai. Among the most acclaimed Chinese-language poets of his generation, he is often regarded as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to poetry, he is the author of short fiction, essays, and a memoir. Known as a dissident, he is a prominent representative of a school of poetry known variously in the West as "Misty" or "Obscure" Poetry.
Arthur John Arberry FBA was a British scholar of Arabic literature, Persian studies, and Islamic studies. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. His English translation of the Qur'an, The Koran Interpreted, is popular amongst academics worldwide.
Wong Kwok Pun is a Hong Kong scholar, poet and translator. He is most famous for rendering Dante's La Divina Commedia into Chinese while preserving the terza rima rhyming scheme, an approach no Chinese translator had ever tried to take.
Amir Or, is an Israeli poet, novelist, and essayist whose works have been published in more than 50 languages.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. She was both the first woman and the first Asian person to be awarded Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her first poetry collection, Crossing The Peninsula, which she published in 1980. In 1997, she received the American Book Award for her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces.
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī (1213–1286), also known as Ibn Saʿīd al-Andalusī, was an Arab geographer, historian, poet, and the most important collector of poetry from al-Andalus in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Arabic: الصادق الرضي, born January 1969 in Omdurman, Sudan, is a Sudanese writer and poet.
Dai Wangshu, also Tai Van-chou, was a Chinese poet, essayist and translator active from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s. A native of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, he graduated from the Aurora University, Shanghai in 1926, majoring in French.
Nazik al-Malaika was an Iraqi poet. Al-Malaika is noted for being among the first Arabic poets to use free verse.
Saad Abdulrahman Albazei is a Saudi intellectual who is known for his critiques of Arabic culture and comparative studies that map the East-West cultural and literary relations.
Wai-lim Yip, is a Chinese poet, translator, critic, editor, and professor of Chinese and comparative literature at UC San Diego. He received his PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University. He is also a visiting teacher at China's Peking University and Tsinghua University.
Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi was an Iraqi historian, novelist, poet, journalist and broadcaster. He is known for mediating between Arabic- and English-language cultures, and for his scholarship of modern Iraqi literature. He is also remembered for his theories on Arabic grammar, on Shakespeare, as well as his role in Islamic education and his work on the poetry of al-Mutanabbi.
Hasan Tawfiq was an Egyptian poet, literary critic and journalist. He belongs to the third wave of the Arabic and Egyptian literary movement known as "The New Poetry." A major part of Tawfiq's poems consist of free verses. Tawfiq was known in the Arab world as a journalist and in Egypt he worked for some time as editor-in-chief of the Ar-Raya journal. Tawfiq wrote articles for the "Culture" section of the Qatar-based Ash-Sharq journal. The literary alias of Tawfiq is "Magnoon al-Arab." It derives from a Middle Eastern tragic love story, Majnun and Layla.
Leung Ping-kwan, whose pen name was Yesi, was a Hong Kong poet, novelist, essayist, translator, teacher, and scholar who received the Hong Kong Medal of Honor (MH). He was an important long-time cultural figure in Hong Kong.
Mohamed Enani was an Egyptian translator, fiction writer, dramatist, critic and scholar.
Yam Gong is the pseudonym of the Hong Kong poet Lau Yee-ching.
Germain Droogenbroodt is a Belgian poet born 11 September 1944 in Rollegem, in the Flemish part of Belgium. Apart from being a poet, he is both a translator and a publisher. He became known as a translator for his rendition of the poems of Rose Ausländer, Sarah Kirsch, Peter Huchel, etc.
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.
