Jalal Hasan

Jalal Hasan was born in Baghdad in 1968. He published his first story ‘Five Travelers by Five Paper Boats’ whilst still in secondary school and graduated from the University of Baghdad’s Spanish Department in 1994. In 1992, after the publication of his 98-word story, ‘The Last Day for Rain!’ in the Lebanese Magazine Al-Aadab, Hasan was arrested and detained for seven months. After continued pressure on him personally, Hasan fled to Jordan in May 1997, and worked in Amman as a freelance writer and journalist, until he moved again to Arizona State, as a refugee in 1999. He currently lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles, where he writes and drives a cab (what he calls ‘the best job in the world!’). He has published two collections of short stories The Last Day for Rain! (1998) and Meanwhile…in Baghdad (2008, both with Alwah, Madrid). He is currently writing a novel.