Ibtisam Barakat ابتسام بركات is a Palestinian-American poet, artist, educator and author working in both English and Arabic. She was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Ramallah before immigrating to the United States of America. She is the author of eight books including Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine , Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood.
Her books won the Arab-American Book Award; the International Reading Association’s Book Award; the Middle East Book Award; the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Book Award, and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Her writings have been translated into more than thirty languages. Reviewers called Ibtisam Barakat’s work: “ground-breaking”; “riveting”; “genius”; “eloquent”; “timely”; “beautiful” and “highly recommended.” She taught Writing Ethics at Stephens College, was a delegate to the United Nations third conference on the elimination of racism, and was a two-time judge for the national finals of Poetry Out Loud. She started to write at a war shelter when she was three years old, and met Alef, the first letter of the Arabic language, and fell in love with words. She continues to write because threads of stories stitch together humanity’s wounds.”