Ibtisam Barakat is an author, poet, translator and artist from Palestine. She lives in the United states and writes in both English and Arabic.

Her memoir in English about growing up in Ramallah, Tasting the Sky, a Palestinian Childhood, won more than twenty awards and honors, including the International Reading Association's Best Book in 2008, and Best Literary Book on the Middle East, and was designated an American-Library association Notable Book, and a Book for a Global Society. It is now available in six languages.

Her book, in Arabic, Al-Ta' Al-Marbouta Tateer, about a letter in the Arabic alphabet who refuses to do what it is supposed to do in a word, won the Anna Lindh Foundation's award: Read Here, There and Everywhere, for best literature for young readers in Arabic in 2011.

She was awarded the 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the Children’s Literature category for her book Al-Fatah Al-Laylakeyyah (The Lilac Girl), published by Tamer Institute for Community Education (Palestine) in 2019. The beautifully illustrated story is about a young Palestinian girl who loves to paint but who has lost her home due to war. Through recreating her house in a rainbow of watercolours she finds freedom in the world of her imagination and creates beauty from pain.

For more information about Ibtisam Barakat, please visit her website: www.ibtisambarakat.com


Contributor's Issues

Banipal 45 - Writers from Palestine (2012)

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