Parween Habib

Parween Habib is a Bahraini poet, critic and media expert. She has overseen specialist training for Dubai Media Incorporated and helped to launch highly successful cultural dialogue programmes, the first of their kind in the Gulf. In 2011, she won the Dynamic Women Prize awarded by The George Washington University, the first international prize to be given to successful and inspiring women from around the globe. Her story was studied by students of the university on one of the world’s largest online networks. She is the author of two critical works and three poetry collections and her poetry has been translated into seven languages. She obtained an MA (with distinction) in Literary Criticism, focusing on the poetic style of Nizar Qabbani, from Ain Shams University, Cairo, and a PhD (with distinction) in Literary Criticism: a study of the language of women's poetry in the Gulf (1975-2004), from the Arab League University, Egypt. Her book on Techniques of Expression in the Poetry of Nizar Qabbani is part of the Arabic language curriculum at secondary school level in Bahrain. Habib is a member of the committee for modernising methods of teaching the Arabic language, an initiative of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. She writes a weekly article for Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper and a monthly article for the Dubai Cultural magazine. She has conducted televised interviews with 500 Arab novelists, poets and thinkers. Her poetry collections include: Your Scared Masculinity, my Paper Childhood (2001), I Gave the Mirror my Back (2009), The Butterfly (2012), and a book of prose entitled: Lace/Less than the Desert (2010).