Areej Gamal

Areej Gamal is an Egyptian writer, novelist, translator, and film critic, based in Cairo. In 2014, she won first prize in the short story competition presented by the Goethe Institute Cairo for her story “Tanin” (طنين), which was then translated into German and presented at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair. Her short story “An Alternative Guide to Getting Lost” (مسارات جانبية للتيه) was translated into English and published in The Book of Cairo (Comma Press, UK, 2019). Her first novel, Hi Maryam, It’s Arwa (أنا أروى يا مريم) published by Dar Saqi in 2019, was funded by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. In 2021, Gamal won the Sawiris Prize for Best Novel by an Emerging Author. In 2023 her book of short stories  الليلة الأولى من دونك (The first night without You)  was published by Alain Publishing in Cairo.

Manal Shalaby is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Her research interests include mythology and folklore, posthumanism, film and media. She has published articles in ArabLit, John Libbey’s Scaled for Success, Peter Lang’s companion The Deep, and several academic journals. Currently, she is a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at DePauw University in Indiana.