Emad Fouad

Emad Fouad was born 1974 in Al Farouniya, a village in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, and grew up in Shobra Elkhema. He studied journalism in Cairo and Ghent, and has worked as a freelance journalist for several Arabic newspapers and magazines.

Fouad, who mixes Maṣri (Egyptian Arabic) with Standard Arabic, has had his poetry published in a series of international periodicals, and five volumes of poetry released by publishing houses in Beirut und Cairo. His relocation to Antwerp in 2004 had a profound effect on his poetry; his poems about an Oriental prostitute, for instance, illustrate how his attention has shifted to observing characters and places he would have dismissed while still in Egypt. This in turn has meant that certain poems were omitted from publication by his Arab publisher.

Emad Fouad’s poems have been translated into more than ten languages. For the 5th and 6th German-Arabic Poetry Salon in Aachen and Bonn, several of Fouad’s poems were published in German translation in the anthology »einfach so« (2012; tr. Just like that). Several poems from Fouad’s volume of poetry »Silk« (2007) were performed together with verses by Belgian author Eva Cox in a scenographical theater play directed by the Iraqi artist Hazem Kamal Aldin. Fouad is also a recipient of the Dutch El Hizjra–Literatuurprijs.