Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France, and the Middle East, and educated in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia. Claire Messud writes that she is “a contemporary Orpheus.” Her recent poetry books include Life in a Country Album, winner of the Palestine Book Award and finalist for the Foreword 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/The Invisible Star (Spanish/English). She is the author of eight plays and the editor of two anthologies, and her flash essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, and The Irish Times, among others. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, and the Africa Institute, among others. She is professor of literature and creative writing at New York University.