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Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” She has lived in four continents, is the author of 10 award winning books, translated into over 15 languages, including Life in a Country Album, winner of the Palestine Book Award; the flash collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers,” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and Africa Institute, among others. She is professor of literature and creative writing at New York University-AD, and writes the literary travel column, “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine.
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We planted a river
By Samira Negrouche, translated from French by Nathalie Handal
February 19, 2025
We planted a man / his destiny suspended
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When He Said His Name
By Giovanni Quessep, translated from Spanish by Nathalie Handal
February 19, 2025
the white labyrinth of love moved my flesh / and grew the time of guilt
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Being is Not a Fable
By Giovanni Quessep, translated from Spanish by Nathalie Handal
February 19, 2025
like destiny, in the dusk of the wind
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Requiem for my ancestor’s fig tree
By Samira Negrouche, translated from French by Nathalie Handal
February 16, 2025
Which hand sowed the ashes / where the ancestor planted life
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Awam Amkpa: What’s Missing Will be Found
By Nathalie Handal
October 27, 2024
The Nigerian director on his longtime relationship with Wole Soyinka, and making The Man Died, inspired by his friend’s prison memoir.
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Natalie Diaz and Nathalie Handal: Map of the Next World
By Nathalie Handal and Natalie Diaz
October 19, 2020
The two award-winning poets consider borders, both real and figurative, through the lens of their new collections.
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After Kaddish
Poetry by Nathalie Handal
September 27, 2018
Skeletons in our minds, it’s a private grief, a private grief, you hear.
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My East in Venice
By Nathalie Handal
April 3, 2017
Piecing together a fragmented Palestinian family.
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The Night and Nightingale
By Nathalie Handal
March 1, 2017
I ran my hands through his hair as if counting the seconds of my life.
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Kamal Aljafari: Unfinished Balconies in the Sea
By Nathalie Handal
February 18, 2016
Filmmaker Kamal Aljafari talks to Nathalie Handal about the poetry of memory, and displacement in Palestine
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Elisa Biagini: A World Reinvented Through Poetry
By Nathalie Handal
February 7, 2014
Nathalie Handal talks to the Italian poet about her sometimes disturbing imagery and how her work helps us decipher the world.
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Last Night in San Pedro de Macorís
By Nathalie Handal
June 25, 2013
Some people like ideas, others like motion, some like one woman, others roam.
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Jonathan Galassi: Against the Line
By Nathalie Handal
June 1, 2012
The literary legend on his new book of poetry, about a personal evolution, and those he's published; MFA's and prizes; and the ongoing river of language.
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Mark Strand: Not Quite Invisible
By Nathalie Handal
April 15, 2012
Pultizer Prize-winner Mark Strand on falling in love, leaving the U.S., and the next chapter.
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Haiti
By Nathalie Handal
January 13, 2012
In the first piece in our Writers Bloc project, our collection of essays about education systems around the world, writer Nathalie Handal visits Haiti a year after its devastating earthquake.
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Freedom
By Nathalie Handal
May 1, 2011
even the guards will count / the scars on their tongue / and prepare to heal
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We Are All Going to Die
By Nathalie Handal
January 15, 2011
One year after the earthquake that devastated her native Haiti, the novelist on rebuilding the island, art in a time of trouble, and inhabiting bodies.