Abdo Wazen

2016 Judge

Judge Profile: 
Abdo Wazen

Abdo Wazen is a Lebanese poet and critic, born in 1957. He is editor-in-chief of the cultural pages of Al-Hayat newspaper. He won the Dubai Press Club's 2005 Cultural Journalism Award, and the 2012 Sheikh Zayyed Children's Literature Award for his novel The Young Man who Saw the Colour of the Air (2011). He has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels as well as works of criticism and translation. His poetic works include: The Closed Wood (1982), The Eye and the Air (1985), Another Reason for the Night (1986), Garden of the Senses (1993), Doors of Sleep (1996), Lantern of Temptation (2000), Fire of Return (2003), A Broken Life (2007) and The Days Are Not for Bidding Them Farewell (2014). His other works include: My Father's Room (2003), Open Heart (2009), Mahmoud Darwish: the Stranger Falls Upon Himself (2006), Poets of the World (2010), An Introduction to Novels of the Lebanese War (2010), and Amin Maaluf, Breaking Boundaries (2012). His poetry has been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. His novel Open Heart was published in French as À Coeur Ouvert (2016) and his poetry volume Garden of the Senses was the subject of an MA thesis at Toulouse Le-Mirail University, France.