Fatima Sharafeddine was born in Beirut and spent her early childhood in Sierra Leone. Her family returned to Lebanon when she was still a child, and she spent fifteen years living through the Lebanese civil war. After receiving a B.A. in Early Childhood Education, she moved to the United States, where she earned a master’s degree in education and another in Arabic literature. She has taught preschool in Houston, Texas, and Arabic language and culture classes at Rice University. She is an active member of the Lebanese section of IBBY (LBBY) and has written more than ninety books for young children. Her most recent books are the young adult novels The Servant and Ghady and Rawan.

Fatima has twice been nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She has also been nominated for the Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation. She now divides her time between Beirut and Brussels, where she writes and translates full time.