Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France, and the Arab world, and educated in the United Kingdom and the United States. Her recent books include the flash collection The Republics, which Patricia Smith lauds as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers”; The Invisible Star; Poet in Andalucía; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, which The New York Times says is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).”  She is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, winner of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature, Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award, among other honors, and a professor at Columbia University.