In the warm embrace of a tropical island night, a young Nathalie Handal curls up beneath the soft flicker of candlelight, the shadows around her weaving fantastical shapes on the walls. Outside, the night deepens, but within, the glow of imagination ignites, inviting her into a magical world that will one day shape her own words on the page.
Today, as an award-winning author and poet, Handal uses her early experiences as a traveler to share a unique global perspective. Born in Haiti to Palestinian parents from Bethlehem, the French-American spent her early years moving between the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and the Levant. Amid the upheaval of frequent relocations driven by political conflicts, her precious notebooks became the source of comfort and stability.
“My earliest memories are hearing stories come to life in multiple languages,” says Handal. “I was fascinated by stories, even when they weren’t meant for my ears. I used to hide under the table and listen to what the grown-ups had to say.
“Early on in my life, my stories and notebooks became my homeland and continue to be. Today, poetry is the only place I can be with all the cities and all the people I love at once.”
The diverse voices of Handal’s family and the nomadic nature of her childhood led to an international education, which would later develop into a global career as a writer and professor. A graduate of the University of London, where she achieved an MPHIL, and Bennington College in Vermont, where she earned an MFA, Handal taught at Columbia University in New York for 17 years before moving to NYU Abu Dhabi in 2021, where she is now Professor of Literature and Creative Writing.
“I'm interested in creating an atlas of global narratives,” she says. “I grew up on four continents speaking seven languages. Everything I do, whether writing, teaching, translation, or literary research, is part of a quest for an inventive, cognitive, and emotional expansion.”
Today, Handal is the author of ten award-winning books, translated into over 15 languages, including Life in a Country Album and The Republics, which won the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. She has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and Africa Institute. She was featured at the United Nations for Outstanding Contributors in Literature. Her travel column, “The City and the Writer,” for Words Without Borders magazine, has been running for two decades.
In addition, Handal has edited two best-selling anthologies, including The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, which won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award and has become a modern reference for the understanding of Arab women's writing.
“The project took over five years and included 82 women writers, with a 62-page introduction to contextualize their work,” says Handal. “Before this book, particularly in the US, Arab women’s poetry was hardly translated. It was important to eradicate their invisibility.”
Handal held writing positions at universities worldwide, yet the global education at NYUAD made for a more fixed move. This year, the professor joined the faculty permanently after three years as a visiting writer.
“Abu Dhabi is aligned to my personal and artistic life, and the university’s global vision is to expand the American-centric diversity in New York,” says Handal.
“The Middle East is a home to me and NYUAD is the perfect place to be.”
