Omaima Abdullah El Khamis is a Saudi Arabian writer, born in 1966. She graduated with a BA in Arabic Literature and worked as a teacher and director of the Department of Educational Media within the Ministry of Education, before becoming a full-time writer in 2010. Since 1993, she has published four short story collections. Her first novel Al-Bahriyat (Sailors) appeared in 2006. It was reprinted seven times and a special edition was printed in Egypt. Her second novel published in 2008, The Leafy Tree, was longlisted for the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Literature. Saja’s Visit was published in 2013 and translated into French in 2021. Her most recent novel,Voyage of the Cranes in the Cities of Agate or the The Book Smuggler (2017) won the 2018 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and was translated into English by Sarah Enany. El Khamis has published a number of children’s books which have been translated into other languages. She writes a weekly column for Elaph newspaper. 

Her Twitter account (in Arabic): twitter.com