The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction

Maya Abu Al-Hayat is a Beirut-born Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem, but working in Ramallah. She has published two poetry books, numerous children’s stories and three novels, including her latest No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab, 2013). She is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She contributed to, and wrote a forward for A Bird is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry.

Liana Badr is a novelist, story writer, journalist, and poet. Raised in Jericho, she obtained a BA in philosophy and psychology from the Beirut Arab University, but was not able to complete her MA due to the Lebanese Civil War. She has worked as a volunteer in various Palestinian women’s organizations, and as an editor in the Al Hurriyya review cultural section. After 1982, she moved to Damascus, then Tunis, and Amman. She returned to Palestine in 1994. Since her first novel A Compass for the Sunflower (Women's Press), in 1979, she has since published three collection so of short stories (Stories of Love and Pursuit, Golden Hell, I Want the Day), a collection of novellas (Balcony Over the Fakahani), two further novels, a biography of the poet Fadwa Touqan and five children’s books.

Anas Abu Rahma is a poet and fiction writer. He has two published YA novels, as well as dozens of short stories for younger children. His novel The Yellow Corn Inn won the Children's Book Publishers Forum Award. Whilst his book A Story about Q & L won the Etisalat Award for Children's Books.

Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian writer who grew up in a village in Northern Palestine. She completed her Master’s Degree in Arabic Literature at An-Najah National University in Nablus. Besides poetry, picture books, short stories, novels, and memoirs, she has written a number of television and radio scripts. Her books have received many awards and recommendations. Ismee Alharakee Farasha (translated into the English as Code Name: Butterfly) was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries. Ismee Alharakee Farasha and Ashjaar lil-Naas al-Ghaa’ibeen (translated into English as Trees for the Absentees) were both runners up for the Etisalat Award For Children’s Arabic Literature in 2013. Code Name: Butterfly was shortlisted for the UK-based Palestine Book Awards in 2017.

Ameer Hamad is a poet, short story writer and translator, who has published his work in numerous magazines and websites, including Beirut Literature Magazine and the New Arab website. He was born in Jerusalem in 1992, graduated from Birzeit University, with a major in Computer Science and is currently working on his first collection of short stories.

Born in Hebron in 1965, Khaled Hourani is an artist, curator, critic and journalist based in Ramallah. He is the founder of Al Matal Gallery, founding director of the International Academy of Art in Palestine, and a former General Director of the Fine Arts Department in the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. He is also the founder of Picasso in Palestine project, and co-director of a documentary of the same name. In 2013, he was awarded the Leonore Annenberg Prize Art and Social Change in New York. This is one of his first pieces of published fiction.

Ahmad Jaber holds a master's degree in Civil Engineering and is a winner of the Abdul Qattan Foundation Award for Young Writer 2017 for his story collection Mr. Azraq in the Cinema. He has published stories in many local websites and newspapers.

Ziad Khadash is a Palestinian writer. He was born in 1964 in the village of Beit Nabala, and lives in the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah. Khadash holds a BA in Arabic literature from the University of Jordan and works as a creative writing teacher in schools in Ramallah. He is author of 12 short story collections, the most recent of which was Overwhelmed by Laughter (House of Everything, Haifa). His story ‘Wonderful Reasons to Cry’ was shortlisted for the 2015 Kuwaiti Al-Multaqa Prize for the Short Story.

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were evicted from their land in Palestine in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in a refugee camp in Jordan, and began his career as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked in the media and cultural sector until 2006. To date, he has published 15 poetry collections, 21 novels, and several other books. In 1985, he started writing the Palestinian Comedy covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history in a series of independent novels. His works have been translated into English, Italian, Danish, Turkish, and Persian. Three of his novels have been shortlisted or longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) - sometimes referred to as the 'Arab Booker' - and in 2018 his novel The Second Dog War won it. In 2012 he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity, and his novel Prairies of Fever was chosen by The Guardian one of the ten most important novels written about the Arab world.

Mahmoud Shukair was born in Jerusalem in 1941 and is one of the best-known short story writers in the Arab world, and his stories have been translated into numerous languages. His 45 books include nine short story collections and 13 books for children. He has also written extensively for television, theatre, and print and online media. In 2011, he was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Prize for Freedom of Expression. His 2016 novel Praise for the Women of the Family was nominated for the IPAF, (also known as the Arabic Booker Prize). He has previously been the editor-in-chief of the weekly Jerusalem newspaper Al-Taliah.