Desert

Adonis, born Ali Ahmad Sa’id, is a Syrian poet. Author of twelve books of poetry, and many books of literary and cultural criticism and several translations, he has been one of the leading modernizers of modern Arabic poetry since the mid-twentieth century. He is recipient of the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature for 2017.

Khaled Mattawa currently teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan. He is the author of four books of poetry and a critical study of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Mattawa has coedited two anthologies of Arab American literature and translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry. His awards include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the current editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.