Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi American poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry collections The War Works Hard (shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize), Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (winner of the Arab American Book Award), The Iraqi Nights (winner of the John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation), and In Her Feminine Sign, which was chosen as one of the ten best poetry books of 2019 by the New York Public Library. Her nonfiction book The Beekeeper was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her debut novel, The Bird Tattoo, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Mikhail is a laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and is a recipient of the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She currently teaches Arabic and poetry at Oakland University in Michigan.