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other paths for shahrazad.jpg

Other Paths for Shahrazad: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women

$29.95

Edited by Jennifer Jean

A bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry by forty women poets from eleven Arab nations. 

A project of the Her Story Is (HSI) collective, led by Iraqi and American women writers and artists, Other Paths for Shahrazad features poems curated by the Iraqi contingent of HSI. Each poem was cotranslated by HSI members and collaborators from Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Canada, and the United States. 

The anthology is arranged so that the poems are in dialogue with each other, rather than separated into stark sections according to theme, region, or author, so that the reader experiences it as they experience a standard collection of poetry: as a potent journey, as poems speaking to poems.

Edited by Jennifer Jean

A bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry by forty women poets from eleven Arab nations. 

A project of the Her Story Is (HSI) collective, led by Iraqi and American women writers and artists, Other Paths for Shahrazad features poems curated by the Iraqi contingent of HSI. Each poem was cotranslated by HSI members and collaborators from Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Canada, and the United States. 

The anthology is arranged so that the poems are in dialogue with each other, rather than separated into stark sections according to theme, region, or author, so that the reader experiences it as they experience a standard collection of poetry: as a potent journey, as poems speaking to poems.

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About the Editor


Jennifer Jean is the author of Where Do You Live?, VOZ, The Fool, Object Lesson, and Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry and has received honors from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, DISQUIET, Mass Cultural Council, the Her Story Is collective, and the Academy of American Poets. She has published poems and co-translations in Poetry, Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, The Common, and On the Seawall, and she is the senior program manager of 24PearlStreet.

About the Contributors


Contributors include Muna Alaasi, Laila Alahdab, Marwa Abo Daif, Omaima Abd Shafy, Samia Abdulrahman, Violette Abu Jalad, Huda Aldaghfaq, Hanaa Ahmed, Souzan Ali, Huda Almubark, Iman Alsebaiy, Samira Baghdadi, Salwa ben Rhouma, Fatima Bennis, Suzanne Chakaroun, Mejda Dhahri, Rasha Fadhil, Hannan Haddad, Susana Hajjar, Jackleen Salam, Salma Abdul Hussein al-Harba, Faleeha Hassan, Azhar Ali Hussein, Asmaa Hussin, Ataf Janem, Nadia Al-Katib, Nesrin Ekram Khoury, Dima Mahmod, Hoda AbdelKader Mahmoud, Fatima Mansor, Zakia Al-Marmuq, Eman Masrweh, Raghda Mostafa, Nermeen Al Mufti, Khawla Jasim Alnahi, Amira Salameh, Layla Al Sayed, Sumia al Shaybani, Zizi Shosha, Mariam Soliman, and Elham Nasser Al-Zabedy.

Advanced Praise

"Paradoxical as it might sound at first, there is such a thing as 'timeless urgency', an outcry compassing rage and exquisite tenderness in one high note sustained above the passage of time. Such an urgency gathers the voices of OTHER PATHS FOR SHAHRAZAD, and it is timelessness that, emerging from those voices, gives this collection a unique and solemn authority as well as an irrepressible joy.”

—Donald Revell, Guggenheim fellow


Many anthologies offer glimpses of world poetry, but few reveal the depth and liveliness of Other Paths for Shahrazad: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women. Collecting poems from twelve countries, and offering vivid translations, editor Jennifer Jean, herself an expert translator, has performed a profound service for readers and writers of English. Other Paths for Shahrazad radiates what the Egyptian poet Raghda Mostafa calls “unfettered beauty that can’t be denied or owned.”

—Peter Campion, winner of the Rome Prize

Format: Paperback
Published: February 2026
ISBN: 9781961209589