Chawki Bazih (Chair)

Chawki Bazih was the Chair of the 2021 judging panel. He  is a Lebanese poet and writer, born in Tyre, southern Lebanon, in 1951. After graduating in 1973 with an M. A. in Arabic Language and Literature from the College of Education in the Lebanese University, he worked as a teacher, a cultural consultant for the Ministry of Media and a columnist for a number of Arabic newspapers. He is the author of works of literary criticism, with a particular focus on poetry and the novel, as well as 17 books of poetry and four works of prose. Recently, his collected works were published in three volumes. His poetry has been translated into several languages, including English, French and German, and studied in many books of literary criticism and university theses. He has won several prizes and awards, including the Okaz Prize for Arabic Poetry (2010), the Kamal Jumblatt Medal (2010), the Sultan Owais Award, in the poetry category (2017), The Palestine Medal for Culture and the Arts (2017) and the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Culture and Creativity (2020).