Photo by Robert Akrawi

Born in Baghdad, Dunya Mikhail has published four collections of poetry in Arabic and two in English. They include (titles are translated from the Arabic) The Psalms of Absence, Almost Music, The War Works Hard.

Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea is a multi-genre bilingual book, 2009, New Directions.

In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing.

“The War Works Hard”, New Directions, 2005, (London edition, Carcanet, 2006) won PEN’s Translation Award, shortlisted for Griffen Poetry Prize, and selected by New York Public Library as one of 25 best books of 2005.

She currently lives in Michigan and works as an Arabic resource teacher for Dearborn Public Schools.