Mazen Maarouf (Palestine/Iceland) was born in Beirut in 1978. He graduated with an MA in Chemistry from the Lebanese University. He is the author of three collections of poetry: As If Our Pain Was Bread (2000), The Camera Doesn't Take Pictures of Sparrows (2004, 2nd edition 2010) and Angel on a Washing Line (2012). In 2015, he published his short story collection Jokes for Armed Men. He has written for a number of newspapers in Lebanon and the Middle East and his writing has been translated into several languages. He also works as a translator.