Rabih Alameddine is a painter and author. He was born in Amman, Jordan, grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon. He was educated in England and America and has an engineering degree from UCLA. After university he moved back to Kuwait, then returned to Lebanon, and finally moved to San Francisco. He now divides his time between San Francisco and Beirut.

Alameddine has had solo gallery shows in cities throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East. He began to write in `96 and his first novel, Koolaids: Or The Art of War (`98), was nominated by the Lambda Literary Foundation for the best Gay Men's Fiction Award 1999. His story collection, The Perv, was published by Picador USA (`99) and his story “Bread” was a Best American ‘Distinguished Stories’ selection.

His articles have appeared in periodicals as diverse as Zoetrope, The Evening Standard, The Los Angeles Times and Al-Hayat. He has lectured at numerous universities including M.I.T in America, and American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

Alameddine’s novel I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters, was published by Norton in October 2001 and was a Book Sense Nov/Dec 2001 Fiction selection. Alameddine received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

His latest novel, The Hakawati, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in May 2008 and was an international bestseller. It is in a 4th hardback printing and will be published in fifteen countries. He is working on a novel tentatively titled An Unnecessary Woman.