Meet OlongoAfrica’s Translation Editor
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Ibrahim Fawzy as OlongoAfrica’s Translation Editor. In this role, Fawzy will head our Lingua project and other translation-related projects at OlongoAfrica.
Ibrahim Fawzy comes with a ton of experience, passion, and ambition in literary translation and African literature. He is an Egyptian writer and literary translator working between Arabic and English. He holds an MFA in Comparative Literature at Boston University. He won a 2023 PEN Presents award for his Arabic to English translation of The White Line of Night. His work has been featured in various literary
magazines and anthologies, including Best Literary Translations 2025. He is also a host on the podcast, New Books Network and a recipient of the Global Africa Translation Fellowship, the 2024 Peter K. Jansen
Memorial Travel Fellowship from The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA).
He approaches translation as a creative and ethical practice, often describing it as “a dance between two languages”, and views literature as a vital space for survival, resistance, and the reimagining of identity. His translations have appeared in a range of international journals, magazines, and anthologies. His translation of Hassan Akram’s novel, A Plan to Save the World, is forthcoming from Sandorf Passage.
Fawzy recently completed a six-month mentorship with the National Centre for Writing (UK) as part of its Emerging Literary Translators programme and is a two- time graduate of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT). His work has been presented at readings and literary events, including the PEN Women in Translation series.
In April 2025, Fawzy sat down with OlongoAfrica publisher Kọ́lá Túbọ̀ṣún in Boston for a freewheeling conversation on writing and African literature. See below.
We’re thrilled to welcome Ibrahim to our OlongoAfrica family and we look forward to his exciting work in our translation directions. You can follow him on twitter at @IbrahimSayedF1.