Naomi Shihab Nye is an Arab American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. In total, she has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry. Her works include poetry, young-adult fiction, picture books, and novels. Nye received the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in honor of her entire body of work as a writer, and in 2019 the Poetry Foundation designated her the Young People's Poet Laureate for the 2019–21 term.
Alaa Ahmed Seif Abd-El Fattah, known professionally as Alaa Abd El-Fattah, is an Egyptian-British blogger, software developer and a political activist. He has been active in developing Arabic-language versions of software and platforms.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is an Australian writer of fiction and non-fiction. She is an advocate for Palestinian people and human rights in general, and much of her work focuses on identity and what it means to be Muslim in Australia. Her debut novel, Does My Head Look Big in This?, was published in 2005, and Coming of Age in the War on Terror was published in 2021.
Does My Head Look Big In This? is author Randa Abdel-Fattah's first novel. It was released in Australia, by Pan MacMillan Australia, on 1 August 2005. It won the Australian Book Industry Award and Australian Book of The Year Award for older children.
Ten Things I Hate About Me is a 2006 young adult novel by Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. The book was first released in Australia on October 1, 2006, through Pan MacMillan Australia. Ten Things I Hate About Me was awarded the 2008 Kathleen Mitchell Award for Excellence in Young Adult Writing and was shortlisted for the 2008 Redbridge Book Award.
Sliman Mansour is a Palestinian painter, sculptor, author and cartoonist, considered a leading figure among contemporary Palestinian artists. Mansour is considered an artist of intifada whose work captures the cultural concept of sumud. His paintings which have been exhibited around the world reflect the Palestinian struggle and include images of women in Palestinian traditional clothing and Levantine tree-filled landscapes. In 1987, he was part of the New Visions collective that boycotted Israeli supplies and instead used local natural Palestinian materials.
Sheikh Radwan is a district of Gaza City located nearly 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) northwest of the city center. It borders al-Shati camp to the southwest, Rimal to the south, and Jabalia to the east. The Sheikh Radwan Cemetery is located in the district. It contains hundreds of graves for Palestinians killed in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, and Said Siam.
Lisa Suhair Majaj is a Palestinian-American poet and scholar. Born in Hawarden, Iowa, Majaj was raised in Jordan. She earned a B.A. in English literature from American University of Beirut and an M.A. in English Literature, an M.A. in American Culture and a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan. In 2001, she moved to Nicosia, Cyprus. Her poetry and essays have been published. In 2008, she was awarded the Del Sol Press Annual Poetry Prize for her poetry manuscript Geographies of Light. "In difficult times, poets and writers have always provided lifelines."
Randa Jarrar is an American writer and translator. Her first novel, the coming-of-age story A Map of Home (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays, the collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (2016), and the memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country (2021).
The Beersheba bus bombings were two Palestinian suicide attacks carried out nearly simultaneously aboard commuter buses in Beersheba, Israel, on August 31, 2004. 16 people were killed and more than 100 were injured. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The 2002 Jaffa Street bombing was a suicide bombing which occurred on January 27, 2002, in the center of Jerusalem. One civilian was killed and about 100 civilians injured.
Amira Nowaira is an Egyptian academic, translator, columnist and author. She earned her doctorate in English literature from the University of Birmingham. She has served as chair of the English department at Alexandria University, and is currently a professor there. She has published a number scholarly books and journal articles. More recently, she has contributed journalistic pieces to The Guardian. Apart from her own books, Nowaira has also done translations, both from Arabic to English and from English to Arabic.
Randa Ghazy is an Italian writer of Egyptian origins.
A Map of Home is a 2008 novel by Randa Jarrar. The book tells the life of a girl named Nidali, the feminine version of Nidal, which means "struggle". A Map of Home is a coming-of-age tale, telling the story of Nidali's life in Kuwait, Egypt, and the United States.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese–Australian media presenter and writer, who had an early career as a mechanical engineer. She was named Young Queenslander of the Year in 2010 and Queensland Australian of the Year in 2015 for her engagement in community work. Abdel-Magied has been based in the United Kingdom since 2017, after her comments about Sharia on TV and a social media post on Anzac Day led to her being widely attacked in Australian media, a petition calling for her sacking from ABC TV, and numerous death threats on social media.
Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis is a Palestinian-American writer and poet. Zarou-Zouzounis writes poetry for all ages, prose, historical fiction for children & adults, short stories and science fiction. She obtained her associate of arts degree from City College of San Francisco, and continued her studies at the renowned Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. She is described as being influenced by her heritage and has frequently written on subjects relating to the Middle East.
Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent, whose work includes fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. She is the author of over fourteen books for children and adults, notably a short story collection entitled Foreign Soil (2014), and her 2016 memoir The Hate Race, which she adapted for a stage production debuting in February 2024. Her poetry collections include Carrying the World (2016), How Decent Folk Behave (2021), and It's the Sound of the Thing: 100 New Poems for Young People (2023). In 2023, Clarke was appointed the inaugural Peter Steele Poet in Residence at the University of Melbourne.
Fatma Omar An-Najar was a Palestinian suicide bomber who lived in the Gaza Strip. On November 23, 2006, she detonated explosives she was wearing on a belt, and injured several Israeli soldiers near Beit Lahia and the Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza. Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing. Her family said she was 64 and a grandmother.
Ziyad Jamil Abdel Fattah is a Palestinian politician, writer, journalist and novelist, born in Tulkarm, Palestine. He is one of the leaders of the Fatah movement, founder of the Palestinian News Agency, a member of the Palestinian National Council in the Palestine Liberation Organization for several sessions, and the former president of Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), the Palestinian General Authority for Consultations, and the Palestinian National Library. Abdel Fattah was very close to late president Yasser Arafat, and he witnessed all the events on his side. Abdel Fattah has been dubbed "the legend of the Palestinian revolution media."
