Yasmeen Hanoosh is an Iraqi

Iraqi people

The Iraqi people or Mesopotamian people are natives or inhabitants of the country of Iraq, known since antiquity as Mesopotamia , with a large diaspora throughout the Arab World, Europe, the Americas, and...

 academic and translator. She was born in Basra

Basra

Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

 in 1978. She moved to the United States in 1995, subsequently obtaining a BA, MA and PhD (in Middle Eastern Studies) from the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. The title of her doctoral thesis, submitted in 2008, was "The Politics of Minority Chaldeans between Iraq and America". She is currently a professor of Arabic at Portland State University

Portland State University

Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...

.

Hanoosh is also a translator of literary works from Arabic to English. In 2002, she won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Prize for her translation of Scattered Crumbs

Scattered Crumbs

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, a novel by the Iraqi writer Muhsin al-Ramli

Muhsin al-Ramli

Muhsin Al-Ramli is an expatriate Iraqi writer living in Madrid, Spain since 1995. Doctorate in Philosophy and Letters, Spanish Philology. Universidad Autónoma of Madrid 2003, thesis topic: The Imprint of Islamic Culture in Don Quixote. Translator of several Spanish classics to Arabic. Where he...

. In 2010, Hanoosh won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 to translate Closing His Eyes, a short story collection by writer and fellow-Basraite Luay Hamza Abbas

Luay Hamza Abbas

Luay Hamza Abbas is a noted Iraqi writer. He was born in Basra and studied at Basra University, completing a PhD in 2002. He now teaches literary criticism at Basra University...

. Her translations have appeaerd in Banipal

Banipal

Banipal is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three times a year...

and the Iowa Review among others.