Ghassan Zaqtan is a Palestinian poet, novelist and editor. He is author of eleven collections of poetry. His book Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, translated by Fady Joudah, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2013. He was awarded the National Medal of Honor by the Palestinian president in June the same year. He was also nominated among the short-listed winners of the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 2015 Sheikh Zayid Literature Prize. His work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Norwegian, German and other languages.