Mazen Maarouf

Mazen Maarouf is a Palestinian-Icelandic poet and writer, lauded as a rising international literary star. He has published three collections of poetry: The Camera Doesn't Capture Birds, Our Grief Resembles Bread, and most recently An Angel Suspended On The Clothesline, which has been translated into several languages including into French by Samira Negrouche. His work is currently being translated into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal.

He has written literary and theatre criticism in various Arabic magazines and newspapers namely An-Nahar and Assafir (Lebanon), Al-Quds-el-Arabi (London) and Qantara (Paris); and he has translated numerous Icelandic poets as well as the following novels in Arabic: The Blue Fox, Hands of my Father by Myron Uhlberg, The Story of the Blue Planet and Dwarfstone. He resides in Reykjavik.

Nathalie Handal

The poetry reading was followed by a Q&A and discussion moderated by poet and writer Nathalie Handal, a specialist in contemporary international literatures, she teaches at Columbia University.