Local poet (and 2013 Stranger Genius of literature) Maged Zaher describes the birth of his new anthology of Egyptian poets as "an act of friendship." In 2010, he befriended Cairo poet Ibrahim El-Sayed, and the two began exchanging poems. Zaher translated one of El-Sayed's poems into English "to understand it more" and sent it back to him. The translation became a ritual. During a trip to Cairo, Zaher met six other poets through connections established through El-Sayed—"Cairo's downtown is very small," Zaher explains, "so most people know each other"—and began translating their work out of "friendship more than anything else," but also as "an act of communication for me."

When Zaher visited Cairo, he'd meet with the seven writers in coffee shops and they'd discuss poetry, translation, and the parade of changes that rolled through Egypt during the Arab Spring. (He says all seven writers participated in the revolution.) Though at first he admits to "butchering" the poems in translation, he quickly became better at it, and soon he decided to formally translate and edit their work into an anthology of young Egyptian poets…

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