Melanie Magidow holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of Texas at Austin. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Commission. She lives in Minneapolis. She is also a co-host of the Goodreads Middle East North Africa Lit Book Group.
Alyeh Mehin-Goldbaum is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, with minors in Anthropology and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She teaches courses on the politics, anthropology, and philosophy of the region, as well as Persian language and culture. Her research examines private English language education in Iran, focusing on its relationships with space, discourse, and identity formation. Translation is a personal passion and a way she supports friends, allowing her to bridge Persian researchers and writers with the English-speaking world.
Michelle Quay is Lecturer of Persian at Brown University, where she teaches Persian language, literature, cinema and culture. Her translation work has appeared in Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, Two Lines and elsewhere. In 2023, she was awarded the Mo Habib Translation Prize for her in-progress translation of the novel Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime by Iranian author Reza Ghassemi, forthcoming from Deep Vellum Press in 2025.
Katherine Van de Vate translates modern Arabic fiction into English. Prior to embarking on translation, she served as an American diplomat in the Middle East and as a curator of Arabic books and manuscripts at the British Library and Princeton University. Her work has been published in Words without Borders, Asymptote, Arablit Quarterly, Y’alla, Sekkah, and elsewhere. Her translation of The Last Crossing, a novel by Omani writer Badriyah Al Badri, was published by Dar Arab in 2024.
Dalia Youssef is a Teaching Assistant at Cairo University wirh a PhD in comparative literature. She holds a Masters degree with excellence in poetry and is also a practicing freelance translator and interpreter. Dalia’s academic and work experience range from teaching English language and literature to studying and analyzing cultural practices including translation, media and literary production and performing arts.