♥ Ferial Ghazoul, chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo (AUC), and John Verlenden, writing instructor at the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, have won the University of Arkansas Arabic Translation Award for 2013. They received the award in recognition of their work translating Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems of Qassim Haddad. The award is administered by the King Fahd Centre for Middle East Studies, under the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences, University of Arkansas. Ghazoul and Verlenden's manuscript will be published by Syracuse University Press. The translators and poet split a prize of $10,000. Ghazoul and Verlenden have been translating as a team in Cairo since 1995. Their first project, Quartet of Joy by Mohamed Afifi Matar, also won the Arkansas award (1997).
