Taleb al-Refai

Taleb al-Refai is a Kuwaiti novelist and short story writer, born in 1958. He is the author of a number of works including The Shade of the Sun(1998), Petty Thefts (2011) and The Dress (2009). In 2002, he won the Kuwaiti State Prize for Literature for his novel Scent of the Sea. Between 2003 and 2008, he worked for the Kuwaiti National Council of Culture, Arts and Literature and edited the monthly arts review, Jaridat Al Funoon. He is the head of the Al Multaqa Prize for the Arabic short story, founded in 2015 and run in partnership with the American University in Kuwait, where he teaches creative writing. In addition to writing fiction, he has published several literary and historical studies. He was Chair of Judges for the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and his novel Here was longlisted for the 2016 Prize.