Crossing Embers

Badria Al Shihhi is a novelist, academic professor and a Deputy Chairperson of the Omani State Council, with a PhD and MSc. In Chemical Engineering from Loughborough University. She has worked in different positions and gained many experiences. Among her busy non-literary work, she has managed to fulfil her favourite hobby of writing and published three novels and many short stories at an earlier stage (started at age of 12). She is the first female novelist in Oman. Her first novel “Crossing Embers” which was first published in 1999; is considered by many critics as the birth of true Omani novel. Badria is also a mother of five children. She is a frequent traveller and plans an early retirement to spend more time on writing and exploring new places.Sawad Hussain is an Arabic translator and litterateur with a passion for bringing narratives from Africa to a wider audience. She has lectured at the IAIS at the University of Exeter, and taught Arabic (KS3 & KS4) in Johannesburg and Dubai. Her work has been recognised by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her most recent translations include Black Foam by Haji Jaber (AmazonCrossing) and What Have You Left Behind by Bushra al-Maqtari (Fitzcarraldo Editions). She was selected to be the Princeton Translator in Residence in 2025.