From the River to the Sea

Samer Abu Hawwash is a Palestinian poet, writer and translator, born in Sidon, Lebanon, in 1972. He started publishing his works in Lebanese magazines and newspapers in 1991, and in 1996 graduated in Journalism and Communication from the Lebanese University. His first poetry collection, "Life is Printed in New York", was published in 1997 and his most recent, "From the River to the Sea", in 2024. His nine other poetry collections include "This Is Not How Pizza Is Made", "I Will Kill You", "Death", "Last Selfie with a Dying World" and "Ruins". He also has three fiction works, "The Journal of Photographed Niceties", "Valentine's Day" and "Happiness or a Series of Explosions that Shook the Capital". From 2004 he lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates, translating and editing American poetry and English-language fiction, and currently resides in Barcelona, Spain. He started his project translating American poetry in 1995 and has translated into Arabic works by over twenty American poets, including Charles Bukowski, Langston Hughes, Kim Addonizio, Robert Bly, Billy Collins and Charles Simic. He has also translated over forty prose works by major internationally renowned writers, including Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", Yann Martel's "Life of Pi", and "The Invention of Solitude", "Travels in the Scriptorium" and "Sunset Park" by Paul Auster. In 2009, he was one of 39 Arab authors chosen for the Beirut39 project, which took place in 2009-2010 when Beirut was the Arab World Book Capital. In 2024, he was awarded the Sargon Boulus Prize for poetry and translation.