Dunya Mikhail was born in Baghdad, Iraq. After graduating from the University of Baghdad, she worked as a journalist and translator for the Baghdad Observer. Facing censorship and interrogation, she left Iraq, first to Jordan and then to America, settling in Detroit. She is the author of The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea, and The War Works Hard, chosen as one the New York Public Library’s Books to Remember, as well as her edited volume, Fifteen Iraqi Poets. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Knights Foundation grant, a Kresge Fellowship, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing, and works as a special lecturer of Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan.

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