Zeyn Joukhadar is a Syrian American writer and the author of the novels The Thirty Names of Night, which won the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Literature and the Stonewall Book Award, as well as The Map of Salt and Stars, which won the Middle East Book Award and was a Goodreads Choice Awards and Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize finalist. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Salon, The Paris Review, [PANK], and elsewhere and has been included in anthologies such as Letters to a Writer of Color, This Arab Is Queer, Kink, and others. They have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Joukhadar serves on the board of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and has mentored emerging writers of color with the Periplus Collective for the past four years. He is currently adapting The Thirty Names of Night as an immersive theater piece set in New York City, commissioned by Noor Theatre Company. A fluent Italian speaker and translator, he is currently based in Italy.