Iman Mersal, PhD, MA (Cairo University)

About

Iman Mersal is a poet, translator, and literary scholar. She is an Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. Mersal is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and Parnassus, among others. The Threshold, a selection of Mersal’s poetry was translated by Robyn Creswell, and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022.  Another selection entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow Press, New York in 2008. Her most recent publications include three non-fiction books: Archives and Crimes. translated into English by Robin Moger (Kayfa Ta and Archive books, March 2022. Berlin, Germany). Kayfa Talta’im: ‘An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as How to Mend: Motherhood and its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press, Berlin, Germany, 2018).  Fi Athar Enayat al- Zayyat (Traces of Enayat al-Zayyat, 2019) has been translated into French by Richard Jacquemond, as Sur les traces d’Enayat Zayyat, Actes Sud, Paris. The book was awarded the prestigious Shaykh Zayed award for literature in 2021.