Iraqi-Welsh Ruqaya Izzidien grew up in rural Wales before studying Modern Languages at Durham University. She lived in Gaza and Egypt before moving to Morocco where she now lives.
Her debut novel, The Watermelon Boys (Hoopoe, 2018) won the Betty Trask Award for first-time novelists under 35. She served as the London Book Fair’s writer-in-residence in Sharjah, and contributed to Just So You Know (Parthian,2020), a collection of essays from Welsh writers.
As a journalist, her work has appeared in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, the New Statesman, The New Arab, The National, and the BBC. She runs the blog, Muslim Impossible, which reviews inaccurate depictions of Arabs and Muslims in television, film and literature.
