Sinan Antoon

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, scholar, and translator. He holds a BA in English from the University of Baghdad, an MA in contemporary Arab studies from Georgetown University, and a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic studies from Harvard. 

Antoon has published two collections of poetry in Arabic and two in English: Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull Books, 2023) and The Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press, 2007). His fourth novel, The Book of Collateral Damage (Yale University Press, 2016), was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 and published in English translation in 2019. His first novel I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2007) has been translated into German, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese. Antoon’s translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s final work of prose, In the Presence of Absence (Archipelago Books, 2011), won the 2012 American Literary Translators’ Award.

Antoon is currently an associate professor of Arabic literature at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He lives in New York City.