André Naffis-Sahely was born in Venice to an Iranian father and an Italian mother but raised in Abu Dhabi. He was later educated in Britain. His nonfiction writing has appeared in The Nation, The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review Daily, Poetry, New Statesman, The Independent, The White Review and The Chimurenga Chronic. He has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Dar al-Ma’mûn. He has translated over twenty titles of fiction and poetry from the Italian and the French, including works by Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola, Alessandro Spina, Abdellatif Laâbi and Tahar Ben Jelloun. The Promised Land: Poems from Itinerant Life (Penguin, 2017) is his debut collection of poetry. He currently teaches at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles and at Whittier College. He is also a Visiting Teaching Fellow at the Manchester Writing School.