Basma Abdel Aziz is an award-winning writer, sculptor, and psychiatrist. A long-standing vocal critic of government oppression in Egypt, she is the author of several works of non-fiction books and a columnist for  Al-Shorouk. In 2016 she was named one of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers for her debut novel The Queue, which was also nominated in 2017 in the long list of BTBA. She lives in Cairo.