About the Author

Omar Sabbagh is a widely-respected and widely-published poet and critic. His poetry and prose (critical and creative) have appeared (and oftentimes repeatedly) in such venues as: Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Reader, POEM, Kenyon Review Online, Agenda, Poetry Wales, Stand, Wasafiri, The Wolf, Banipal, The London Magazine, Life Writing, and elsewhere. His three extant poetry collections include: My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint and The Square Root of Beirut (Cinnamon Press, 2010). A fourth collection, To The Middle of Love, is forthcoming with Cinnamon Press at the start of 2017. His novel(la) set in and about Beirut, Via Negativa: A Parable of Exile, was published by Liquorice Fish Books in March 2016. A Dubai sequel to the latter, From Bourbon to Scotch, will be published by Eyewear in December 2016. He's a BA in PPE from Oxford; three MA's (all from the University of London) in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Philosophy; and a PhD in English Literature from KCL. For the years 2011-13 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB). In 2014, he took up an Assistant Professorship in English at the American University in Dubai (AUD). Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of the Anaphora Literary Press. Previously, she taught college English for three years at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and the Middle Georgia State College. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism. She published two academic books with McFarland: Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson (2013) and The Formulas of Popular Fiction: Elements of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Novels. She published two poetry collections Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press, 2011) and Battle for Athens (Anaphora, 2012). She also released two historical novels: The Romances of George Sand (2014), and The Battle for Democracy (2016). She published two fantasy novellas with Grim's Labyrinth Publishing: The Great Love of Queen Margaret, the Vampire (2014) and The Campaigns against the Olden: Kingdoms of Laruta (2014). She also wrote and illustrated a children's book, The Sloths and I (Anaphora, 2013). She has been editing and writing for the independent, tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal since 2009, and started the second Anaphora periodical, Cinematic Codes Review in 2016. She has presented her research at the MLA, SAMLA, EAPSU, SWWC, BWWC and many other conferences. She won the MLA Bibliography, Kentucky Historical Society and Brown University Military Collection fellowships.