Advisory Board:

May el-Morsy is the head of the Author Relations Team at Kotob Arabia, an independent publishing house in Cairo, Egypt.

Saeed al-Wakeel is a professor of Arabic as a Foreign Language at the American University in Cairo as well as of Arabic Language and Literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo, from which he holds a PhD in literary criticism. He has published widely in literary journals in Egypt.

Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan-American poet and professor of creative writing at California State University. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English from Indiana University, and his award-winning poems have appeared in numerous literary journals. Mattawa is also an activist for new literary talent in the Middle East, where he has organized workshops for young writers.

Salma Hellal is co-editor of Editions Barzakh, a literary publishing house in Algiers, Algeria.

Selection Committee:

Suna Kafadar assistant curator for the series.

Arta Khakpour assistant curator for the series.

Alexa Firat is a PhD candidate in Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a lecturer of Arabic Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia where she lives.

Rasha Salti

Samuel Shimon is an Iraqi writer (An Iraqi in Paris) and also the assistant editor at Banipal magazine and the curator of Kikah.com, a website publishing new Arabic literature in Arabic.

Fadi Toufic is a Lebanese writer and journalist who writes primarily creative non-fiction about the Middle East.

Anna Swank who holds a Master's in Near Eastern Studies from the Kevorkian Center at New York University, coordinates and translates for the ArteEast Short Stories Literary Series. She is also the founding faculty member of a new Arabic program at Friends Seminary in New York, as well as a freelance translator in the New York area.