Sonia Nimr is considered one of the most important children's writers in the Arab world. She was born in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in 1955. As a child, folklore, proverbs, the stories of Victor Hugo and Naguib Mahfouz, and tales of her own making mixed with lived experience, forming Nimr's sensibility. During Nimr's undergraduate studies at Birzeit University in Ramallah, she was arrested and sentenced to three years in an Israeli prison for political reasons. It was in prison that she began writing. She went on to earn a PhD in Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. Nimr's first two picture books Al Tanboury's Shoes and The Clever Swallow were inspired by Palestinian folk tales, and published in 1996. She returned to Palestine, after working with the Museum of Mankind and the British Museum, in 1999. Over the years, Nimr has published 21 books for children and young adults, winning major awards for her work, including the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children's Literature, and multiple nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Since 2006, Nimr has also worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Birzeit University.

Translator bio:

Yasmeen Hanoosh is a literary translator and fiction writer. She directs the Arabic program at Portland State University, and teaches Arabic language and literature. Hanoosh studies the cultural politics and literary expressions in post-2003 Iraq, especially what concerns the country's ethno-religious minorities. Her first story collection Ardh al-Khayrat al-Mal'una (The Land of Cursed Riches, Al-Ahliyya Press) was published in 2021, and her second, Atfal al-Janna al-Mankuba (Children of Afflicted Paradise), is forthcoming from Kotob Khan, Cairo. Hanoosh's translations of Arabic fiction have appeared in literary magazines including World Literature Today, Banipal, ArabLit Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and others.

Raouf Karray was born in 1951 in Sfax, Tunisia. His father was a furniture maker and his mother worked with embroidery, both of which inspired Karray's early sense of art. He grew up playing in the orchard near his house, observing the fruit growing on the vines, the soil, and the horizon line. In 1969 he embarked on a world tour that lasted eight years and in 1977 he established himself in Italy for a period of five years. In Italy he taught graphic arts, worked as a stage designer, produced illustrations for a newspaper, and made television commercials and posters. He has participated in numerous art events and exhibitions in Tunisia and abroad since 1995. He has exhibited several times at the Palace of the Popes in Avignon and the Institute of the Arab World in Paris. In 2012 he was awarded the KITABI prize for the best children's books in Arabic. His work is motivated by the sense that a society is nourished when children are cared for.