Wael Almahdi is a health care professional and an English language poet from Bahrain. His interests include languages (specifically Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and other languages within the Perso-Arabic literary tradition) and etymology. A translator for more than twenty years, he is the winner of a  high commendation from the Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize 2023 for his translation of Iraqi poet Kadhem Khanjar’s A mass grave has been found near. His Arabic translations include Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead, and poetry by Hanan Issa, the National Poet of Wales.

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ArabLit Quarterly (a poetic tribute in English to Badr Shakir As-Sayyab), Snakeskin Magazine (here and here), The Knight Letter (on translating Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky into Arabic), The Raven’s Perch, Ekstasis, Blue Minaret, Ekstasis, Ravi Magazine, La Beletra Almanako (poetry in Esperanto), Dental News (a poem titled Dentophobe) and others. His first poetry collection, A Chain of Contradictions, is scheduled to appear in 2024.