Announcing: Judges for the 2019 ArabLit Story Prize

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The 2019 ArabLit Story Prize will open to submissions on March 15, 2019. Today, we announce this year’s three judges:

The crowdfunded prize named its first winner last year: Muhammad Abdelnabi’s “Our Story,” translated by Robin Moger.

This year, three judges will name a shortlist of three to five stories on September 15 and a winner on October 15. They are:

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Nariman Youssef is author of Tahrir – 18 Days of Grace (Summer of Unrest series). Her translations include Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter, Donia Kamal’s Cigarette No. 7, and lyrics for Palestine Underground, a Boiler Room documentary. She manages a translation team at the British Library.

Jana Elhassan is a novelist and journalist. Her first novel, Forbidden Desires, was published in 2009 and won the Simon Hayek Prize. Her second novel Me, She and the Other Women was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, as was her third, The 99th Floor. The latter was translated to English by Michelle Hartman.

Adam Talib is the translator of Fadi Azzam’s Sarmada, Khairy Shalaby’s The Hashish Waiter, and Mekkawi Said’s Cairo Swan Song. He also co-translated (with Katharine Halls) Raja Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace, for which he was a co-winner of the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation. He teaches Arabic literature at Durham University.

This year’s rules have changed slightly to accommodate what we learned last year, and submissions will be taken through Submittable instead of through email.

Submission materials must include: 1) Cover letter with the name of author, translator, story, and length. 2) The story in translation, rendered as 3000 words or fewer in English, attached as a Word document, without the name of the author or translator. 3) The story in the original Arabic, preferably in the same Word document. 4) Some evidence you have the rights to translate and publish this story, such as an email from the author or a scanned note.

The winner and translator will split the $500 prize equally.

Submissions are set to open on March 15, 2019 and close on May 15, 2019.

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