Poet Biography

Tarek Eltayeb

TAREK ELTAYEB was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1959, the son of Sudanese parents. He
has lived in Vienna since 1984. He is a poet, novelist and writer of short stories, who
also teaches at universities in Krems and Graz, Austria. In 2005 he received the Elias Cannetti Fellowship of the City of Vienna, and in 2007 the Grand Prize for Poetry at the
Festival Curtea des Arges in Romania. His books have been translated into Spanish, English, French, German and Serbian. Tarek has also read at festivals throughout the world, and in the U.S., particularly at the University of Iowa. A bilingual edition of his poems, called Brittle Conversation, was published in 2007.