Poetry of the Middle East

Agi Mishol was born in 1947 in Hungary to parents who survived Auschwitz and the Holocaust. When she was 4, she and her parents moved to Israel, where she still lives on a farm with her husband. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She teaches at Alma College in Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Ghassan Zaqtan was born in 1954 near Bethlehem and lives in Ramallah. He has worked with the Palestinian resistance movement and was editor of "Bayader" literary magazine of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is editor-in-chief of the quarterly poetry journal "Al-Shoua'ra" and is co-founder and director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah. Zaqtan also writes two weekly newspaper columns.