Paula Haydar is assistant professor of Arabic at the University of Arkansas. She holds a PhD in comparative literature and an MFA in literary translation. To date, she has translated twelve novels by the contemporary Lebanese authors Jabbour Douaihy, Rashid Daif, and Elias Khoury; Palestinian authors Sahar Khalifeh and Adania Shibli; and Jordanian author Jamal Naji.
Her translation of Douaihy’s June Rain (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing), which in its Arabic original form was shortlisted for the 2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, was selected as the highly commended runner-up of the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and also made the Daily Star’s list of the six best Middle East novels of 2014. Her translation of Khoury’s The Kingdom of Strangers (University of Arkansas Press) won the 1996 Arkansas Arabic Translation Award, and her translation of Adania Shibli’s Touch (Clockroot), which was awarded the Young Writer’s Award–Palestine by the A.M. Qattan Foundation in its original form, made the longlist of the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards presented by Open Letter Press and Three Percent. Visit her website here.
