Yousef el Qedra is a young poet and playwright living in Gaza, Palestine.
He has a B.A. degree in Arabic literature from al Azhar University, Gaza. His poems have been published in local, national and international magazines, newspapers, and internet websites. His four published collections of poems are The memory is I and the memory is forgotten ( الذكرى أنا و الذكرى منسية) (Gaza, 2001), Innocence of the Darkness ( براءة العتمة) (Ramallah: El-Majed Publishing House, 2004), You Might ( (لعلّكِ (Gaza: CFTA, 2007), Her Tears Will Lament the Devastation (Nasra City: Nasra College for the Arts, 2011). Since 2006, he has worked as a project coordinator of theatre and youth groups for the Cultural Free Thought Association in Gaza City, Palestine Occupied Territories. He teaches drama, literature, and writing. He has written, directed, and acted in several plays, and has written four books. He has given reading tours in the Middle East and Spain. Some of his poems have been published in French and Spanish translation.
Yasmin Snounu, born in Gaza City, Palestine, recently earned a Master’s Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) as a Fulbright scholar at Eastern Michigan University. Her research interests include translation, second language acquisition, phonetics and phonology. She has a B.A. in English and French literatures from Al Azhar University and worked at the Women’s Affairs Center, an NGO that promotes the welfare of women in Gaza. Her co-translations of poems have been published in American magazines and anthologies.
Edward Morin has graduate degrees in English from The University of Chicago and Loyola University (Chicago). He has taught English at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Cincinnati. He has edited and, with Fang Dai and Dennis Ding, has co-translated an anthology, The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution (U of Hawaii P, 1990), as well as a book length manuscript of poems by the contemporary Chinese Cai Qijiao. Collections of his poems include Labor Day at Walden Pond (1997) and The Dust of Our City (1978).
George Adib Khoury is a Nakba survivor from Birzeit, Palestine, who attended high schools in Jordan and Egypt before emigrating to the U.S., where he received a degree in engineering from the University of Detroit and an MBA from Central Michigan University. An engineer, he has translated many technical manuals for heavy machinery and autos from English to Classical Arabic. He has edited the collected poems in Arabic of Diab Rabie, the last of a group of five great Diaspora poets which included Gibran Kahlil Gibran, Michael Naimeh, and Elie Abu-Madi. The volume is entitled Shetharat El-Rabie (Norwalk, CA: The Birzeit Society, 2010).
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Three Poems by Yousef El Qedra translated by Yasmin Snounu, Edward Morin, and George Khouri.
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