Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” A New Yorker of Mediterranean roots, she has lived on four continents. Read More Handal is the author of over ten award-winning books, translated into over fifteen languages, including Life in a Country Album, winner of the Palestine Book Award; the flash collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award; the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía; Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award; and the bilingual collections Riflessi (Italian/English) and La estrella invisible (Spanish/English). She is the editor of two bestselling anthologies and has worked on over twenty theatrical productions. Her writings have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Irish Times. Handal is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and the Africa Institute, a winner of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature, and was featured at the United Nations for Outstanding Contributors in Literature. She is a professor of literature and creative writing at New York University-AD.  She says: “I’m a multi-city person. The city, like love, is inexhaustible.” Read her poem “The City”. The twentieth anniversary edition of her book The Lives of Rain is forthcoming in 2025, and her poetry collection Roma : Roam is forthcoming in 2026.