Dunya Mikhail is an American-Iraqi poet. Born in Baghdad, she worked as a translator and journalist before immigrating to the United States in 1996, where she earned an MA at Wayne State University. Her powerful writing, translation, poetry, and prose (in Arabic and in English translation) speak to the horrors and hardships of war, migration and loss of country, and the complexities that accompany it. The nuance of Mikhail’s work, particularly her poetry, is fueled by a deep sense of identity: as a refugee, an artist, and a woman. Her first book published in English, The War Works Hard(2005), translated by Elizabeth Winslow, was selected as one of the 25 Best Books of 2005 by the New York Public Library.