Trained as an anthropologist and sociologist, he has taught at universities in both countries, while emerging over the years as one of the Maghreb’s most forceful and visionary contemporary Francophone voices. He is the author of over fifteen books of poetry, essays, and drama, and his work has been translated into several languages, among them English, German, Italian, and Arabic,. He translates English- and Arabic-language poetry into French. He directs the series Poems of the World, published by APIC in Algiers, whose first titles were published in May 2018. In June 2016, he won the Dante European Poetry Prize. His work available in English translation includes “Exile is my Trade”: The Habib Tengour Reader, edited and translated by Pierre Joris, and Crossings, translated by Marilyn Hacker. With Pierre Joris, he edited Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four: The University of California Book of North African Literature.