Zuheir El-Hetti is an award-winning Iraqi writer and journalist, born in 1957 and currently living in Germany. He has published four novels, including My Distant Day (2002), American Dust (2009), Days of Dust (2016) and Embers’ Den (2020). He is also the author of an academic study: The Image of the Iraqi in the Arabic Novel (2006).

Samira Kawar is a Jerusalem-born journalist and Arabic-to-English literary translator. Her published translations include Liana Badr’s novel Eye of the Mirror and Abdul Rahman Munif’s autobiographical work, Story of a City: A Childhood in Amman. She is a regular contributor to Banipal, the Magazine of Arab Literature, and served as a member of the judging panel for the 2015 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation