Nathalie Handal

Judged: Oct-Dec 2011

Nathalie Handal

Nathalie Handal is an award-winning poet and playwright. She has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. She is the author of numerous books including Love and Strange Horses, winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, and an Honorable Mention at the San Francisco Book Festival and the New England Book Festival. The New York Times says it is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).” She is the editor of the groundbreaking The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets bestseller and winner of the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award and the co-editor of the landmark anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, called a “beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. She has been involved either as a writer, director or producer in over twenty theatrical or film productions worldwide, most recently her work was produced at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Bush Theatre and Westminster Abbey in London. Handal is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, a Fundación Araguaney Fellow, recipient of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature 2011, and an Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award. She has read her poetry worldwide, has been featured on PBS The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR Radio as well as The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, Mail & Guardian, The Jordan Times and Il Piccolo; and her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. She teaches and lectures nationally and internationally, recently in Africa, and as Picador Guest Professor, Leipzig University, Germany. She is currently a professor at Columbia University and part of the MFA Faculty at Sierra Nevada College. She writes the blog-column, The City and The Writer for Words without Borders magazine. Alice Walker says of Handal’s forthcoming collection Poet in Andalucía: “Poems of depth and weight and the sorrowing song of longing and resolve.”  www.nathaliehandal.com