Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus, A Time Between Ashes and Roses; If Only the Sea Could Sleep; The Pages of Day and Night; Transformations of the Lover; The Book of the Five Poems; The Blood of Adonis, winner of the Syria- Lebanon Award of the International Poetry Forum; Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, Leaves in the Wind, and First Poems. He is also an essayist, an editor of anthologies, a theoretician of poetics, and the translator of several works from French into Arabic. Adonis's awards and honors include the first ever International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the Highest Award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He was elected as Stephen Mallarme Academy Member in Paris in 1983. He has taught at the Lebanese University as a professor of Arabic literature, at Damascus University, and at the Sorbonne. He has been a Lebanese citizen since 1961 and currently lives in Paris.

The International Writer in Residence is sponsored by Helen Zell.