Miral al-Tahawy was born in Sharqiya in the Egyptian Delta into a Bedouin family of the al-Hanadi tribe. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature and director of the Arabic program at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Her works include The Tent (AUC Press, 1998), Blue Aubergine (AUC Press, 2002), Gazelle Tracks (Garnet Publishing/AUC Press, 2009), and Brooklyn Heights (AUC Press 2012), and have been published in almost ten languages.