Andy Spyra and Sinan Antoon

Andy Spyra is a freelance photographer currently based in Hagen, Germany. After working as a staff photographer for the local newspaper in his hometown he studied photography at the Fachhochschule Hannover. Since 2010 he has been working as a freelance photographer on assignments and personal long term projects in the Balkans and more recently in the Middle East.

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist and translator. His poems and essays (in Arabic) have appeared in as-Safir, al-Adab, al-Akhbar, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, Masharef and (in English) in The Nation, Middle East Report, Al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal, Journal of Palestine Studies, The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, Washington Square Journal, and the New York Times.

He has published two collections of poetry; Mawshur Muballal bil-Hurub (Cairo, 2003) and Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2010). His novels include I`jaam (2003), which has been translated into English as I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2006) as well as Norwegian, German, Portuegese, and Italian, Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman (The Pomegranate Alone) (Beirut: al-Mu'assassa al-`Arabiyya, 2010), forthcoming from Yale University Press in Spring 2013 as The Corpse Washer, and Ya Maryam (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2012).

His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book In the Presence of Absence, was published by Archipelago Books in 2011 and won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American LIterary Translators Association (ALTA). His co-translation (with Peter Money) of a selection of Saadi Youssef's late poetry was published by Graywolf in November 2012.

Sinan is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Arab Studies Journal. He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School, New York University and co-founder and co-editor of the cultural page of Jadaliyya.