Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published eight books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his book Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation”.
Nothing More to Lose (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid) was named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio NPR (U.S.) and has been nominated for several awards including the Best Translated Book Award (2015). The same year, Darwish was the recipient of the DJS-Poetry East West Award (China). In 2018, N. Darwish published three collections of poetry: Exhausted on the Cross, When Approaching a Storm and You Are Not a Poet in Granada, all three of which are currently being translated into English and Spanish. You Are Not a Poet in Granada was also released in Spanish by Sonámbulos Ediciones (Spain) as artistic book with photography by Cristina Osorio. In 2020, a bilingual selection of his poems, Embrace, was published by the Poetry Translation Centre in London. N. Darwish has co-founded and directed several cultural and artistic projects throughout the Arab world and served as the literary advisor to the Palestine Festival of Literature. He has held many key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014. |