Salma Khadra Jayyusi

Salma Khadra Jayyusi was born in Safed to a Palestinian father and Lebanese mother. Educated at the Schmidt Girls College in Jerusalem, the American University of Beirut, and the University of London, where she earned a doctorate in Arabic literature under R.B. Serjeant, she taught at universities across Baghdad, Algiers, Khartoum, and the United States.

In 1980, Jayyusi founded PROTA (Project of Translation from Arabic), single-handedly revolutionizing global access to modern Arabic literature by commissioning and editing monumental English anthologies of modern Arabic poetry, fiction, drama, and Palestinian literature. She received the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award as Cultural Personality of the Year in 2020.