Khalil Sweileh was born in Hasaka, Syria, in 1959, and graduated from Damascus University in 1986 with a degree in literature. He is the author of three collections of poetry and four novels. He is editor-in-chief of the Syrian Tishrin Cultural Supplement, and is the literary correspondent of the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar. Alexa Firat is assistant professor of Arabic in the Department of Critical Languages at Temple University.