Margaret Obank was born in Leeds, UK. She has a BA Hons in Philosophy and English Literature (Leeds) and an MA in Applied Linguistics (Birkbeck College, University of London). She was a language teacher in Bradford and lecturer in London Further Education Colleges, and spent many years in printing and publishing, starting at the Africa Publications Trust. In April 1992, after the Gulf War, she organised a festival of Iraqi culture Out of Iraq in London to celebrate the contemporary artistic and literary richness of the cradle of civilisation. She is co-founder of Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation and co-editor of A Crack in the Wall (Saqi Books, 2000). In 2004 and 2006 she put on two Banipal Live UK tours of Arab authors. She established The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, which in turn set up the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, now in its 5th year, and in January this year the Banipal – Arab British Centre Library of Modern Arab Literature in original English and English translation. Banipal Books, which she founded in 2005, publishes works by contemporary Arab authors in translation. In 2007 she became a trustee of the newly-established International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and a member of the Outreach Committee of the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World, a joint project between the universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Manchester in the UK. She is married to Iraqi author and journalist Samuel Shimon.
