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Nathalie Handal (Template:Lang-ar) is a French-American poet and playwright of Palestinian descent.
Biography
She earned a MPhil in English and Drama at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College, Vermont.She has residences in New York City and Paris. She visited Bethlehem for the first time as a teenager.She became interested in the writing of Arab women in the 1990s.
Literary career
Handal is the author of four books of poetry, several plays and the editor of two anthologies. She is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, a Fundación Araguaney Fellow, recipient of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature 2011, the AE Ventures Fellowship, an Honored Finalist for the 2009 Gift of Freedom Award, and was shortlisted for New London Writers Awards and The Arts Council of England Writers Awards. She has also been involved as a writer, director, or producer in over twelve theatrical or film productions. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, such as The Guardian, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetrywales, Ploughshares, Poetry New Zealand, Crab Orchard Review, and The Literary Review; and has been translated into more than fifteen languages. She has been featured in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, Mail & Guardian, The Jordan Times and Il Piccolo. She was the featured poet in the PBS NewsHour on April 20, 2009. Her book The Lives of Rain was shortlisted for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and received the Menada Literary Award. Her latest poetry book, Love and Strange Horses, is the winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY Award), and an Honorable Mention at the San Francisco Book Festival and the New England Book Festival. The New York Times called it "a book that trembles with belonging (and longing)." Her new collection, Poet in Andalucía (2012) was just released.
She has promoted international literature through translation and research, and edited The Poetry of Arab Women, an anthology that introduced several Arab women poets to a wider audience in the West and is used in university classes around the U.S. It was an Academy of American Poets bestseller and won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She co-edited along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond. She was Picador Guest Professor at Leipzig University, Germany, and is currently a professor at Columbia University and part of the Low-Residency MFA faculty at Sierra Nevada College.
Handal writes a blog "The City and The Writer", for the online magazine Words Without Borders. She has also written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible as part of the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books.
Handal writes in English, but uses Arabic, French and Spanish phrases in conversation.
Themes
Her story "Umm Kulthoum at Midnight" was described as a "daring and sensual story about the hypocrisies underlying Arabic morals and traditions."In her collection Poet in Andalucía she goes back to Islamic Spain where she believes Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived in relative harmony and the fates of Jews and Muslims were similar.
Awards
- New London Writers Award, shortlisted in 2000, 2001
- The Arts Council of England Writers Award, shortlisted 2002
- Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles National Book Award Winner, 2002
- Shortlisted for The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry/The Pitt Poetry Series, 2005
- Menada Literary Award, Macedonia, 2006
- AE Ventures Fellowship, 2007–08
- Centro Cultural Generación del 27 and Centro Andaluz de las Letras Fellow, 2009
- Honored Finalist 2009 Gift of Freedom Award
- Honorable Mention, San Francisco Book Festival, 2010
- Honorable Mention, New England Book Festival, 2011
- Fundación Araguaney Fellow, 2011
- Lannan Foundation Fellow, 2011–12
- La Orden Alejo Zuloaga (Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature), 2011
- Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY Award), 2011
Published works
- Poetry
- The Neverfield Poem (1999)
- The Lives of Rain (2005)
- Love and Strange Horses (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010)
- Poet in Andalucía (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)
- Anthologies
- The Poetry of Arab Women (2001, ed. by Handal)
- Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008, ed. by Handal, Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar)
- Plays
- Between Our Lips
- La Cosa Dei Sogni
- The Stonecutters
- The Details of Silence
- The Oklahoma Quartet
- Hakawatiyeh
- Men in Verse"
- CDs
- Traveling Rooms
- Spell
- Essays
- "Mahmoud Darwish: Palestine's Poet of Exile", The Progressive, May 2002
- "Sisterhood of Hope", interview with Zainab Salbi, Saudi Aramco World, September/October 2010
- "We Are All Going to Die", interview with Edwidge Dandicat, Guernica Magazine, January 2011
- "The Other Face of Silence", interview with Elia Suleiman, Guernica Magazine, May 2011
References
- ^ Shalal-Esa, Andrea (2006-12-20). "Arab-American writer is ambassador for Middle East". Washington Post. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- ^ "PEN American Center — Nathalie Handal". PEN American Center. Retrieved 2008-03-19. Cite error: The named reference "PEN" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- "Nathalie Handal". Literati Magazine. 2005. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-19.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - Interview with Nathalie Handal
- "Well-traveled Poet Finds Consistency in Words". Online NewsHour. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. 2009-04-20. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- ^ "Nathalie Handal". Kennedy Center. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
- Handal, Nathalie (2010-09-22). "New Blog Series: Nathalie Handal's 'The City and the Writer'". Words Without Borders. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- ^ "Writers". The Alternative Theatre Company Ltd (The Bush Theatre). Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- ^ "Sixty-Six Books". The Alternative Theatre Company Ltd (The Bush Theatre). Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- The Short Review
- Poetic Journeys: A Conversation with Nathalie Handal
- ^ "Nathalie Handal: Theatre and Film". Nathalie Handal. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- Hill, Holly (2009). "Middle Eastern American Theatre: History, Playwrights and Plays". Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- "Nathalie Handal: Men in Verse in response to 2 John". The Alternative Theatre Company Ltd (The Bush Theatre). Retrieved 2011-09-27.
- Handal, Nathalie (2002). "Mahmoud Darwish: Palestine's Poet of Exile". The Progressive. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - "Sisterhood of Hope". Saudi Aramco World. Aramco Services Company. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- "We Are All Going to Die". Guernica Magazine. 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - "The Other Face of Silence". Guernica Magazine. 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help)