Ramsey Nasr is a poet, writer, actor and director. He is the author of numerousaward-wining books, and currently the Poet Laureate of the Netherlands. He lived in Antwerp for 17 years, and currently resides in Amsterdam. http://www.ramseynasr.nl/
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American poet and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and Columbia Poetry Review. Her poetry collection Atrium (Three Rooms Press) was awarded the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry. Four Cities, her second collection, was recently released by Black Lawrence Press. She is a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellow and her latest collection, Hijra, was selected as a winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press.
Rodrigo Hasbún was born 1981 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He has published three books of short stories, Cinco, Los días más felices and Cuatro, a volume of selected stories entitled Nueve, and the novel El lugar del cuerpo. His second novel, Los afectos (Literatura Random House, May 2015), will be published in ten languages, and will be available in English from Pushkin Press in 2016. Hasbún was twice awarded the Bolivian Santa Cruz de la Sierra National Book Award, he was chosen by the Hay Festival as one of the Bogotá 39 (Best Latin American writers under the age of 39) and he was named one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists.
Hannah Khalil is an award-winning British-born Palestinian-Irish playwright. Her first short play, Ring, was selected for Soho Theatre London's Westminster Prize, and her first full-length piece, Leaving Home, was staged at The King's Head. A commission for Rose Bruford at Battersea Arts Centre followed. Hannah subsequently received support from The Peggy Ramsay Foundation to write Stolen Or Strayed, which received a Special Commendation in the Verity Bargate Award.
Randa Abdel-Fattah was born in Sydney in 1979 and grew up in Melbourne. She has written nine young adult books inspired by her research on racism, including Does My Head Look Big in This? Ten Things I Hate About Me, Where the Streets Had a Name, Buzz Off, The Friendship Matchmaker, The Friendship Matchmaker Goes Undercover, No Sex in the City, Jodie and the Book of You, and Rania and the Book of You.
She worked as a litigation lawyer for ten years and is currently pursuing a PhD exploring everyday multiculturalism and racism in Australia, and remains passionate about my human rights activism. Abdel-Fattah is frequently sought for comment by the media on issues pertaining to Palestine, Islam and Australian Muslims.
Mazen Maarouf is a Palestinian-Icelandic poet and writer, lauded as a rising international literary star. He has published three collections of poetry: The Camera Doesn’t Capture Birds, Our Grief Resembles Bread, and most recently An Angel Suspended On The Clothesline, which has been translated into several languages including into French by Samira Negrouche (Amandier Poésie, 2013).
