Mauritanian writer and journalist Ahmed Isselmou was born in Nema in east Mauritania. His published works include the short story collection Awaiting the Past (Arab Scientific Publishers, Beirut) and the novel Perforated Life (Dar El-Shorouk, Cairo, 2020), and his second novel, Outsider Mode (Dar Al Adab, Beirut), will appear later this year. Read More His short story “Floating Paper” won the Stories on Air competition organized by the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Arabi and BBC Arabic in 2009. Formerly a news producer for both Al-Arabiya and Al Aan television and the deputy chief editor at Russia Today, he now works in Qatar as an assistant program editor at Al Jazeera in Qatar.