Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. Since 2006, he has been a full-time writer and has so far published 14 poetry collections and 16 novels, including his epic fictional project of 8 novels covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history. He is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight literary prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997; his novel Prairies of Fever was chosen by the Guardian newspaper as one of the most important 10 novels written about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro (2015) won the 2016 Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel. His novel The Second war of the Dog was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2018.
Dima Wannous is a Syrian writer, born in 1982. She studied French Literature at Damascus University and the Sorbonne. Her short story collection Details was published in 2007 and was translated into German. Her first novel, Chair, was published in 2008. She has written for newspapers such as Al-Safir, Al-Hayat, the Washington Post and the online outlet Jadaliyya. In 2009, she was selected among the 39 most talented Arab writers under the age of 40 by the Beirut39 project. Her novel The Frightened was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2018.
Najwa Binshatwan is a Libyan academic and novelist, born in 1970. She is the author of the novels The Horses' Hair (2007) and Orange Content (2008), three collections of short stories and a play. In 2005, The Horses' Hair won the inaugural Sudanese al-Begrawiya Festival prize. She was chosen as one of the 39 best Arab authors under the age of 40 by the Beirut39 project and her story The Pool and the Piano was included in the Beirut39 anthology. Her novel The Slave Pens was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017.
Her participation at the XIII EURAMAL Conference was organized in collaboration with Banipal Magazine.
Ali Bader, who was born in Baghdad, began his career by writing and acting for theatre and film. His debut novel, ″Papa Sartre″ (2001), came at a moment of political change for Iraq and the wider region. After that, Bader issued a steady stream of novels that interleave philosophy and history. These books often centre on the lives of male musicians, artists and intellectuals. Bader said that, while writing these books, he was focused on how societies shift ″under the pressure of history.″
Acclaim was not slow in coming: ″Papa Sartre″ won Bader a State Prize for Literature in Baghdad in 2002. His other novels also earned applause from critics and readers alike. Both his 2009 and 2010 novels, ″Kings of the Sands″ and ″The Tobacco Keeper″, were longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and ″The Tobacco Keeper″ has been translated into both English and French.
(from https://en.qantara.de/content/ali-bader-and-al-kafira-when-fatima-became-sophie)