ETEL ADNAN is a widely acclaimed Arab-American poet, writer, essayist and painter who was born and brought up in Beirut. From 1958 to 1972 she was Professor of Philosophy in California. Adnan is the award-winning author of Sitt Marie-Rose and The Arab Apocalypse. Many of her poems have been set to music by contemporary musicians, namely Gavin Bryars, Tania Leon, Annea Lockwood, Henry Treadgill and Zad Multaka. She collaborated with Robert Wislon on his opera Civil Wars and her two plays, Like a Christmas Tree and The Actress have been performed in San Francisco, Paris, Dusseldorff and Bad Hamburg. Adnan’s most recent work, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country is published by City Lights and ‘The Power of Death’, initially appeared in First Intensity (2002).
RIMA ALAMUDDIN was born in Beirut to a Druze father and a Swiss Protestant mother. After receiving a BA from the American University of Beirut, she continued her studies at Girton College, Cambridge. Alamuddin wrote her first novel, Spring to Summer, at the age of nineteen followed by a short story collection. The Sun is Silent was published in 1964, a year after her tragic murder by an unrequited suitor.
HALA ALYAN is a sophomore student at the American University of Beirut who has lived in New York and the Middle East. Alyan considers writing a vital part of her life.
JOCELYNE AWAD is currently editor-in-chief of Mondanité magazine. Her novel, Khamsin (2004), received the France Liban and Richelieu Senghor prizes and her latest work, Carrefour des Prophètes (1994), has recently been translated into Polish.
LAYLA BAALBAKI, born in 1936 to a conservative Shiite Muslim family in south Lebanon, made an instant name for herself with the publication of her first novel Ana Ahya (I Survive, 1958), which was translated into French and other European languages. Two years later her second novel, al-Aliha al-Mamsukha (The Disfigured Gods, 1960) was published, followed by Safinat Hanan ila al-Qamar (Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon, 1964), a collection of twelve short stories.
HODA BARAKAT, an award-winning novelist, was born in 1952 and worked as a teacher, translator and journalist in Lebanon before moving to Paris to become a full-time writer. Her debut novel Hajar al-Dahik (The Stone of Laughter, 1990) won the al-Naqid Literary Prize for first novels. It was followed by Ahl al-Hawa (1993), The Disciples of Passion (2004), and a collection of essays, Rasa`il al-Ghariba (The Letters of the Stranger) published by an-Nahar in 2004.
NAJWA BARAKAT was born in 1960 and moved to Paris in 1985. She has worked as a journalist for a number of leading newspapers, including al- Hayat and an- Nahar, as well as a scriptwriter, radio commentator and translator. Her book Bas al-Awadim (The Bus of Honest People) was published by Dar al-Adab in 1996 and won a major literary prize in France. Ya Salam was published in 1999 and Lughat as-Sir (The Language of the Secret) in 2004.
SLEIMAN EL-HAJJ earned a BA in English Literature and a BS in Biology from the American University of Beirut. He was chief editor of the university science newsletter, Bits and Pieces of Science (2003–4), and has worked as a freelance journalist for the past two years. Currently El-Hajj is a graduate student at AUB.
JANA FAOUR ELKADRI was born in 1980 and graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2001 with a degree in Business Administration. She has worked as a freelance writer for the Nahar al-Shabab supplement and currently she is in the advisory division of Price Waterhouse Coopers. Elkadri lives with her husband, Abdul Aziz, in Toronto.
ZALFA FEGHALI is a Lebanese-Cypriot who was born in1983. She holds a BA in Political Studies and is currently working on an MA in English Literature at the American University of Beirut. Feghali wrote ‘Wild Child’ for a Creative Writing workshop.
ZEINA B GHANDOUR was born in Beirut and grew up in London. Her first novel, The Honey (1999), was published by Quartet Books and translated into a number of languages. Ghandour’s essays and short stories include The King of Lospalos and I: A Guide to Rum Sours: Observing Elections in Haiti; and War Milk. She has worked for various human rights agencies and international organisations in the fields of legal research and election monitoring. Ghandour is currently completing a PhD at the London School of Economics.
MAI GHOUSSOUB is an artist, author and publisher. Born in Lebanon, she moved to London in 1979 where she co-founded Saqi Books. Her work includes Leaving Beirut; Women and the Wars Within; Postmodernism; The Arab in a Video Clip; and Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle-East. Ghoussoub’s artistic output has focused on installations that explore themes of immigration, shifting identities and transexuality. She has written and directed Divas, for Jamil/Jamila a performance play shown in Beirut, London, Paris and Newcastle. Her latest performance/play, Texterminators, was shown at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, the Dominion, Southall, and most recently, at the Marignan Theatre in Beirut.
MERRIAM HAFFAR left Lebanon with her family during the war years to live in the US and the United Arab Emirates. In 2005 she graduated from the American University of Beirut with a degree in Biology and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Environmental Sciences and Management at Ryerson University, Toronto. Haffar enjoys writing during her spare time.
RENÉE HAYEK was born in 1959. She received her BA in Philosophy from the Faculty of Letters at the Lebanese University and worked as a journalist before becoming a teacher at the Collège Protestant in 1980. Her postwar short story collection, Portraits of Forgetfulness (1994), won the first literary prize at the annual book fair held in Beirut that same year.
MIRNA HAYKAL received her BA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. She is currently completing an MA in Medieval Literature and hopes to pursue a PhD in the near future.
HOUDA KARIM studied French Literature at the Lebanese University and later taught in a number of public schools. During the war she left Lebanon with her family and while residing in Paris she produced her first novel, Lézardes (1999). Upon returning to Beirut she wrote Houriya (2004), and her latest novel, A Slice of Beach (Tranche de Plage) is forthcoming. Karim’s novels are set in Lebanon and inspired by the lives of young students she came to know while teaching in Beirut and South Lebanon.
ELLEN KETTANEH KHOURI attended the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where she specialized in Middle East Area Studies and obtained an MA in Political Science. She started her career as a Jordanian diplomat, serving in Bern and Switzerland before establishing the Al Kutba Institute for Human Development, a human rights and democracy organisation in Amman, Jordan. Khouri has worked as a consultant on human rights and democratisation with the European Union Commission Delegation to Jordan and participated in a European Union-sponsored training course on election monitoring. She lives and works in Beirut as a freelance human rights and democracy trainer, and translator.
MAY MENASSA, a journalist since 1968, writes regularly for the cultural section of an-Nahar. She is the author of three novels: The Pomegranate Notebook (1998); Pages of a Prisoner’s Notebook (2000); and The Last Act (2002). Her most recent publication is a children’s book entitled Dans le jardin de Sarah (In Sarah’s Garden) (2005).
LINA MOUNZER was born in Beirut in 1978 and moved to Canada with her family just before the Lebanese war ended. She returned twice on her own, the second time dropping out of university to pursue various career options including teaching and editing. In 2004 Mounzer graduated with a BA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut and is currently pursuing an MA degree in Creative Writing at the University of West Anglia. The One-eyed Man was originally written for an advanced Creative Writing seminar.
MISHKA MOJABBER Mourani started writing at the onset of the Lebanese war in 1975. Although she was born in Egypt, her parents are Greek and Lebanese. Mourani has worked as an educational consultant in the Middle East and Africa as well as an external reviewer and publishing consultant for a number of American and British publishers. She is the author of a series of textbooks and a poetry collection, Lest We Forget 1975–1990, written during the war years. Currently she is Senior Vice President of the International College in Beirut.
EVELYN SHAKIR, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, is the author of Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States (Praeger, 1997). Her short stories have appeared in Post Gibran: An Anthology of New Arab American Writing, the Red Cedar Reviews, Flyway and the Knight Literary Journal. One of her personal essays was recently published in Massachusetts Review, and her essays on Arab-American literature have appeared in a number of journals and collections. Shakir has written and produced a radio documentary on Syrians and Lebanese in the Boston area. In 1999 she spent a semester as a Fulbright Fellow in Lebanon.
EMILY NASRALLAH was born in 1931 and raised in the small southern Lebanese village of al-Kfayr at the foot of Mount Hermon. She was educated at the Beirut College for Women and the American University of Beirut. Nasrallah, who has been writing for thirty-six years, is the acclaimed author of six novels, four children’s books, six collections of short stories and a six-volume biographical series about pioneer women from the East and West. Her first book, Tuyur Aylul (September Birds, 1962) won two prizes and in 1991 she was given the Khalil Jibran award in literature.
NADA RAMADAN graduated with an MA in French Literature from the Lebanese University. She contributes regular reviews and essays to a number of Lebanese newspapers including an-Nahar. Her work explores social and domestic issues that focus primarily on the lives of women.
HANAN AL-SHAYKH was born and brought up in Lebanon. After pursuing a successful career in journalism, writing for an-Nahar, she moved to London where she now lives with her family. Al-Shaykh is the acclaimed author of seven acclaimed novels including The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, two volumes of short stories and two plays. Her latest book, Hikayati Sharhun Yatul, is about her mother.
ALAWIYA SOBH is a writer, novelist and journalist. Her story collection, Slumber, was published in 1986; Stories by Mariam in 2002; and her latest novel, Dunia, in 2005. Since 1990 Sobh has edited a magazine that focuses on issues related to women and family life. During the war she wrote a series of radio programmes which gained instant popularity.
NADINE R. L. TOUMA, an artist and writer, was inspired by the high incidence of plastic surgery in Beirut (in her own words, ‘western noses on eastern faces’) to make 6,000 marzipan noses that she sold from a vegetable truck on the city’s streets. Her installation ‘Haremharrasment: Cairo St Courtship’, was first shown in the 2003 exhibition Harem Fantasies and the New Scheherazades in the Center de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona before going on tour in Europe. Touma’s film “She Comes From a Good Family” was featured in the 2003 International Exhibitionist art series, a short season of art films in London and her latest work, Sayyidi Milady, is a collection of poems and letters. Recently she has created a publishing house for children’s books written in Arabic.
PATRICIA SARRAFIAN WARD was born and brought up in Beirut, Lebanon, and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received Hopwood Awards in Novel and Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in several journals, most recently a short story in the anthology Dinarzad’s Children and a satirical cartoon in Mizna. Her novel The Bullet Collection (Graywolf Press, 2003) received the GLCA New Writers Award, the Anahid Literary Award and the Hala Maksoud Award for Outstanding Emerging Writer. She currently lives on Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey.
NAZIK SABA YARED was Professor of Arabic Literature at the Lebanese American University until 1998. Educated at the American University of Beirut (PhD, 1976), she has subsequently published fifteen books (fiction and non-fiction) as well as stories for young people. Among her recent publications are Cancelled Memories (1998); Arab Travelers and the West (1991); Improvisations on a Missing String (1992); and Secularism and the Arab World (2002). Yared has received several awards, including one from the Lebanese Association for Children’s Books (1997), the Prince Claus Award (1998), and the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (1997).
IMAN HUMAYDAN YOUNES graduated with a BA from the American University of Beirut and is currently working on an MA in sociology. Her first novel B for a House Named Beirut (1997) was followed by Tut Barri (Wild Mulberries). Many of her short stories and articles have appeared in Arabic newspapers and magazines.