Iman Mersal

Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet and essayist born in 1966 in the Nile Delta city of Kafr Sabeer. She is a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and one of the most significant contemporary Arabic poets writing today. Her poetry collections, translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, have been widely acclaimed for their sardonic wit, feminist politics, and formal freedom. Traces of Enayat (2019, English translation 2021, translated by Robin Moger) is her first extended prose work, a genre-defying investigation into the life of Egyptian novelist Enayat al-Zayyat (1936–1963), whose only novel Love and Silence was published posthumously after her suicide. Mersal's book weaves biography, memoir, literary criticism, and personal essay, following her search through libraries, archives, and neighbourhoods to reconstruct a forgotten life. The book jointly won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2023 — the first time a translated work and its translator (Robin Moger) were jointly honoured by the prize. Mersal has also published widely on Arab feminist literature and poetics.