Margaret Obank

Margaret Obank is the founder publisher of Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature (1997), Banipal Books (2004), and Banipal Revista de literature árabe moderna (2020), and a co-founder of the Banipal Visiting Writer Fellowship (2016). She set up sister organisation the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature in 2004, which in turn established in 2005 the annual Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the first prize in the world for published literary translation Arabic to English (inaugural award 2006), in 2010 BALMAL, the Banipal – Arab British Centre Library of Modern Arab Literature (in English translation) and in 2015 an annual Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize Lecture. She is a founding trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). In 2012 she was awarded the Moroccan Chevalier Wissam Aloui medal for services to Arabic literature. She was born in Leeds, UK, has a BA in English Literature and Philosophy from Leeds University, teaching qualifications for Further Education, and an MA in Applied Linguistics (Birkbeck, University of London).