Salma Khadra Jayyusi

was born in Palestine in 1928, of a Palestinian father and Lebanese mother. She grew up in Acre and Jerusalem, graduated from the American University of Beirut and from the University of London. She has lived in Spain, Italy, Germany, England, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan and the USA becoming one of the Arab world’s most distinguished literary personalities widely known for her poetry, literary criticism, scholarship and publishing programmes. She has published two collections of her own poetry, the two-volume Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry and numerous other articles and studies. She taught at several Arab and American universities before founding and directing PROTA, Project of Translation from Arabic, for the translation of the best in Arabic literature, classical and modern, into English. Works she has edited include Modern Arabic Poetry (1991), Modern Arabic Drama (1995), Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature (1992), Legacy of Muslim Spain, 1994), Literature of Modern Arabia (1998). Forthcoming is Modern Arabic Fiction and Drama: An Anthology. With Trevor LeGassick she translated Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist (1982, 2d edn. 1985).