Ghassan Zaqtan
Born near Bethlehem, Palestinian poet, novelist and editor Ghassan Zaqtan has lived in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, a novel and a play, The Narrow Sea, which was honoured at the 1994 Cairo Festival. His verse collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, translated by Fady Joudah, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for 2013, and he was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in both 2014 and 2016. His name appeared for the first time in 2013 among the favourites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
