Haider Catan is an Iraqi-born poet and academic. His prose poem 'Out of Place' was recently featured in the project Say No To War, Pavement Pages at the Newcastle Writers Festival 2022. His collaborative translations with Wollongong poet Tim Heffernan have been published by Red Room Company and Verity La.

Tim Heffernan is a Wollongong poet and recipient of the 2016 joanne burns prize for prose poetry and micro-fiction. His work has been published in numerous Australian journals and anthologies. He collaborated with Iraqi poet Haider Catan in translating the Iraqi anthology Poetry in the Minefield for Verity La’s “Discoursing Diaspora” project, as well as assisting with the translation of poems for The Red Room Company’s Lyrikline Collaboration with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin.

Aya Mansour is a poet, writer and journalist born in Baghdad. She is the author of five books in Arabic. The poetry collection from which this selection is taken, She Sings Alone (2017), was recently translated into French and published by Editions des Lisières under the title Seule elle chante.