Sharjah Book fair to host New York Times' best selling authors

Ayisha Malik

This year's Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) will be hosting a stellar line-up of more than 50 prominent regional and international personalities who best represent today's literary, cultural, intellectual and academic worlds. The luminaries will be busy delivering talks, interacting with visitors and attending numerous other activities throughout the fair.
Featured guests at SIBF this year include Cassandra 'Cassie' Clare, writer of The Mortal Instruments series, which went on to be New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today best sellers, as did its companion series, The Infernal Devices.
Holly Goldberg Sloan, another New York Times bestselling novelist, screen writer, film director and producer, has written books for children and young adults that have been translated into more than 22 languages. Her 2013 novel, Counting by 7s received the Amazon.com Best Books of the Year (ages 9-12) award, and an E. B. White Honor Book Award.
Other guests from the US include Claudia Gray, bestselling young adult writer; Sister Souljah, best-selling author, activist, recording artist, and film producer; Parag Khanna, a leading global strategist, bestselling writer and speaker; Gary A. Rosen, an illustrator, screen writer and film director who illustrated the Russian, Chinese and Portuguese versions of Counting by 7s; and Eric Van Lustbader, thriller writer who has authored more than 35 best-sellers, including The Ninja.
A notable presence at SIBF this year will be Palestinian-American poet, songwriter and novelist, Naomi Shihab Nye, whose volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the (American) 2002 National Book Awards. Renowned writer, poet and artist Rupi Kaur will also be making an appearance at SIBF.
Participating from Australia is Graeme Simsion ,who had a successful business and an international reputation in data management before he decided, at the age of fifty, to become a screenwriter. Graeme's novel The Rosie Project was an international success, with translation rights sold in forty languages. Joining Graeme from Australia is Anne Buist, novelist and professor of perinatal psychiatry at the University of Melbourne.
Participants from Canada include Daniel Lak, journalist, filmmaker and writer, and Terry Fallis, winner in 2008 and finalist in 2011 and 2016 for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, who has authored five national bestselling novels.
This year's edition will see increased participation from the UK with appearances from Jenny Balfour Paul, writer, artist and international lecturer who wrote the acclaimed Deeper than Indigo: Tracing Thomas Machell; poet and writer Deborah Alma and much loved children's books writer Elen Caldecott, whose debut novel How Kirsty Jenkins Stole the Elephant depicts a brilliant mix of imaginative adventure and real-life situations.
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