Rana Asfour

Joumana Haddad is an award-winning Lebanese poet, novelist, journalist and human rights activist. She was the cultural editor of An-Nahar newspaper for numerous years, and she now hosts a TV show focusing on human rights issues in the Arab world. She is the founder and director of the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center, an organization promoting human rights values in Lebanese youth, as well as the founder and editor in chief of JASAD magazine, a first of its kind publication focused on the literature, arts and politics of the body in the Arab world. She has been repeatedly selected as one of the world’s 100 most influential Arab women. Joumana has published more than 15 books in different genres, which have been widely translated and published around the world. Amongst these are The Return of Lilith, I Killed Scheherazade and Superman is an Arab. The Book of Queens is her latest novel, published in 2022 by Interlink.

Rana Asfour is the Managing Editor at The Markaz Review, as well as a freelance writer, book critic and translator. Her work has appeared in such publications as Madame Magazine, The Guardian UK and The National/UAE. She chairs TMR’s English-language Book Club, which meets online the last Sunday of every month. She can be found on X & Instagram @bookfabulous.