Iman Mersal was born in Egypt in 1966. She is a poet, essayist, translator and literary scholar, and Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of poetry in Arabic, selections from which have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, French, Hebrew and Hindi. In English translation, her poems have appeared in Parnassus, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review and The Kenyon Review. A selection of Mersal’s poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press). Her most recent publications include an Arabic translation of Charles Simic’s memoir, A Fly in the Soup (Al Kotob Khan, 2016), and a group of essays, How to mend: on motherhood and its ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017).