Denys Johnson-Davies was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), also known as "the Arabic Booker", is regarded as the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world.
Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author, professor of sociolinguistics and Chair Department of Applied Linguistics at The American University in Cairo. In Addition, Bassiouney is the editor of the Routledge Series of Language and Identity. She is also the editor and creator of the journal Arabic Sociolinguistics Edinburgh. She has written several novels and a number of short stories and won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa. While a substantial amount of her fiction has yet to be translated into English, her novel The Pistachio Seller was published by Syracuse University Press in 2009, and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Bassiouney also won Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in the best Egyptian novel category for her best selling novel, The Mamluk Trilogy. She was also the winner of the National Prize for Excellence in Literature of the year 2022 from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Bassiouney won Sheikh Zaid Literature Award for her novel Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy in 2024.
Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh is the Cultural Advisor to the President of the UAE and the Chancellor of UAE University. He has been active in government service in the United Arab Emirates since its formation in 1971, and with the Government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi since 1968.
Ezzat El Kamhawi is an Egyptian novelist and journalist. In December 2012, El Kamhawi was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his novel House of the Wolf. In June 2022 he was awarded the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press for his article "Suspicious architecture: The obsession with grand buildings and wide streets".
Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) is a major annual literary and publishing event held in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. As one of the world's largest book fairs, it hosted 2,033 exhibitors from 109 countries in 2023 and featured a broad range of activities throughout its 12-days.
Salma Khadra Jayyusi was a Palestinian poet, writer, translator and anthologist. She was the founder and director of the Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), which aims to provide translation of Arabic literature into English.
Charbel Dagher is a Lebanese professor at the University of Balamand, Koura, Lebanon. He has been an active and prominent voice on the Arab cultural scene, mainly in the fields of poetry, Arabic language, and Arab and Islamic arts. He is a Poet, writer and story-writer in both Arabic and French.
The Emirates Literature Foundation, the home of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, is a literature organization in the United Arab Emirates.
Affaf Tobbala is an Egyptian television documentary director and producer and an author, primarily of children's literature. Tobbala has been nominated for and received a number of literary awards in Egypt and abroad. Her 2006 book, Sika and Mokka, received the 2007 Suzan Mubarak Prize for Children's Literature and was included on the 2010 International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) List of Honor.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press is a publishing house based in Doha, Qatar. The press was initially managed by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC and was founded as Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) in 2008 until its transition into HBKU Press in 2015. HBKU Press is part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University which is under the wider community of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. It publishes titles that serve both an international audience as well as the larger Arab community publishing fiction, non-fiction, young adult and children's literature, and academic titles. They highlight local Middle Eastern and Qatari narratives and also translate books from other foreign languages into Arabic.
Hussain Al Mutawaa is a Kuwaiti writer, poet, literary critic and a photographer who was born in 1989. He published two novels and two short stories. In 2019, his short story "I Dream of Being a Cement Mixer" won Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Child Literature and which was translated into English, French, Ukrainian and Italian. Before turning to stories and novels, Al Mutawaa started his literary career in literature as a poet in 2009.
Maryam Saqer Al Qasimi is an Emirati writer for children and young adult. She published eight children short stories. Her short story "Where Did the Letters Disappear?" won the Sharjah Children's Book Award in the category of young readers in English language, 2018. Later, the story was adapted into a musical play.
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.
Mohamed Ait Mihoub, a Tunisian writer, translator, and professor, was born in 1968. He published many books including “Roses and Ash” and “The Romantic Man” which was a translation of Georges Gusdorf’s book “L’homme Romantique”. He won several awards including the Translation Award of Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2020.
Lateefa Buti is a Kuwaiti writer. She has published many books for children including Hatless, which won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2017 in the children's literature category, and was translated into English by Nancy Roberts.
Samar George Al Dayyoub is a Syrian critic, writer, and professor of Arabic, born in 1970. She received her higher education from Al-Baath University in Homs from 1993 to 2002. Al Dayyoub has been a member of both Arab Writers Union and Arab Union for Internet Writers since 2015. She has published several books on Arabic literary criticism, a notable example is ‘Al Khetab Tholathy A Ab’aad: Derasat Fe Al Adab Al Mo’aser’ which was nominated for 13th edition of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the ‘Literary & Art Criticism’ category. Al Dayyoub was also awarded the 2016 Merit prize of the ‘Naji Naaman Literary Prizes’ and the 2016 State Award from the Syrian Ministry of Culture.
Mohamed Salahuddin Abdel-Sameeh Fadl was an Egyptian academic, writer, and translator from Kafr el Sheikh. He has held many educational and non-educational positions in Egypt and abroad. He worked as a medic at the Cairo University, the Al-Azhar University, the Ain Shams University in Egypt, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the College of Mexico in Spain, as well as the University of Sana'a in Yemen and Bahrain. Other non-educational positions held by Dr. Fadl include editing the Journal of the Egyptian Institute of Islamic Studies in Madrid, heading the Department of Arabic at Ain Shams University, other contributions to the Campus Council, and other academic contributions.
Shaker Abdel Hamid Suleiman was the Egyptian Minister of Culture from 2011 to 2017. He served as Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Culture, then Minister of Culture at the Ministry of Kamal al-Ganzuri in December 2011. He was also a Professor of Creative Psychology at The Egyptian Academy of Arts.
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.
