NATHALIE HANDAL is described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” Poet, playwright, nonfiction and literary travel writer, she has lived in four continents, is the author of 10 award winning books, translated into over 15 languages. Her recently published collections include, Volo (Diode Editions, 2023); Life in a Country Album (2019 US / 2020 UK), winner of the Palestine Book Award and a Foreword Indies Book Award finalist; the flash reportage poetry collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award; the bestselling bilingual collection La estrella invisible / The Invisible Star; the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, which The New York Times writes is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).”
Handal is the editor of the groundbreaking classic The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award, and named one of the top 10 Feminist Books by The Guardian; and co-editor of the W.W. Norton landmark anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, both Academy of American Poets bestsellers. She has worked on over twenty theatrical productions either as a playwright, director or producer. Author of eight plays, her most recent works have been produced at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Bush Theatre and Westminster Abbey in London.
Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, The Irish Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, on PBS and NPR, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Africa Institute; is the winner of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature and featured at the United Nations for Outstanding Contributors in literature. She is professor of literature and creative writing at New York University-AD, and writes the literary travel column, “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine.