A founding member of Somali P.E.N. Centre (an affiliate member of International P.E.N. World Association of Writers), and its vice-president until 2010, Said Jama Hussein is a well known Somali scholar who is actively engaged in the promotion of the Somali language and its literature. An essayist and short-story writer, his first collection of short […]
Nato Ingorokva has published three collections of poems, The Poet Eve Lives within Me (2003), The Dry and the Damp (2011) and Equilibrium (2013). Nato is also a translator; in 2005 her translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Selected Poems was published to great acclaim. She is editor in chief of the prestigious literary journal, Mastsavlebeli […]
Toeti Heraty was born in 1933. An outstanding Indonesian poet with a powerful vision, she is also a philosopher, an art historian and a human rights activist who is well known for her opposition to the Suharto regime and for her feminism. She writes subtle poems, both intimate and personal, that also highlight repressive social […]
Ulrich Kratz has spent many decades exploring the literatures of the Malay-speaking world. He has initiated Malaysian and Indonesian poetry readings in London and is the joint editor and translator of an anthology of Indonesian poetry. He is a SOAS Emeritus Professor in Indonesian and Malay.
Nariman Youssef is a Cairo-born, London-based semi-freelance translator with an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh. She works between Arabic and English and part-time manages a translation team at the British Library. Literary translations include Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter, Donia Kamal’s Cigarette No. 7, contributions in Words Without Borders, The Common, […]
Born in Kurdistan in 1963, Dilawar Karadaghi studied drama at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. He has published nine collections of poetry and a book-length poem, Colour of Dust, in collaboration with Kurdish poet, Nazand Begokhani. His collected poems were published in two volumes entitled Jaddey Mekhek (Clove Road). He has translated various […]
Born in Kurdistan-Iraq, Choman Hardi is is a poet, translator and academic. She sought refuge in United Kingdom in 1993 and was educated at Oxford, London, and Kent Universities. Choman’s post-doctoral research focused on the impact of genocide on Kurdish women in Iraq, Gendered Experiences of Genocide (Routledge, 2011). She has published collections of poetry […]
Mbarka Mint al-Barra
Xasan Daahir Ismaaciil ‘Weedhsame’ is widely regarded as one of the most promising young Somali poets of his generation. Thanks to his close relationship with leading poet Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’, Weedhsame is steeped in the long and complex history of Somali poetry and, as a notably gifted practitioner, is committed to continuing its traditions. […]
Born in 1986, Mostafa Ibrahim is considered one of Egypt’s most exciting young poets and has been lauded by the country’s two leading colloquial poets, Abdel-Rahman Al-Abnudi and the late Ahmed Fuad Negm. His first collection of poems, Western Union, Haram, came out in January 2011 (just before the ‘Arab Spring’). His second collection of […]