Nashwa Nasreldin (Gowanlock) is a writer, editor, and literary translator of Arabic prose, plays and poetry. She was one of the judges of the 2025 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. Her published book-length translations include Shadow of the Sun, by Kuwaiti author Taleb Alrefai, and the collaborative novel by nine refugee writers, Shatila Stories, which was longlisted for the 2019 EBRD literature prize, and published by Peirene Press.
She is also the translator of After Coffee, by Abdelrashid Mahmoudi, winner of the 2014 Sheikh Zayed Literature award. The English edition was a Fiction Finalist at the 2019 International Book Awards and was published by HBKU Press, formerly Bloomsbury-Qatar Foundation Publishing. Her co-translation of Samar Yazbek’s memoir, The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, with Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, was published by Rider Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Nashwa is the International Programmes Manager at the National Centre for Writing and is a former programmes and documentaries producer at Al Jazeera English and a former video producer at Agence France Presse (AFP). She is the founder of the Suffolk-based Bury St Edmunds Writers’ Workshop and holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Nashwa sits on the translations advisory board of The Other Side of Hope, a journal publishing literature by refugees and immigrants. She writes and edits poetry and essays, with a focus on language, literature, history, current affairs, and culture.
Nashwa Nasreldin 