Art of Translation Series: Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail will be reading from several of her collections with focus on her forthcoming work: In Her Feminine Sign. It is the first book she has written in both Arabic and English, a process she talks about in her preface, saying, “I didn’t translate them; I only wrote them twice.” Mikhail will be reading in both English and Arabic and talking about her translation process or why she doesn’t call it “translation.”

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Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq (Baghdad) in 1965 and came to the United States thirty years later. She’s renowned for her subversive, innovative, and satirical poetry. After graduation from the University of Baghdad, she worked as a journalist and translator for the Baghdad Observer. Facing censorship and interrogation, she left Iraq, first to Jordan and then to America (Detroit). Mikhail’s honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Knights Foundation grant, the Kresge Fellowship, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She is the co-founder of Michigan-community-based Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture. She currently works as a special lecturer of Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan.

Photo credit © Nina Subin