Abbas El-Zein

Abbas El-Zein (Arabic: ﻋﺒﺎﺲ اﻟﺰﻳﻦ ; born 1963) is an Australian writer and academic. He is the author of two acclaimed works of fiction – a novel, Tell the Running Water and a collection of short stories, The Secret Maker of the World – as well as an award-winning memoir, Leave to Remain, about growing up in civil-war Lebanon and migrating to Europe and Australia. He has published essays and articles on war, displacement and environmental decline. His work has appeared in the New York Times the Guardian the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as literary magazines Meanjin, Heat and Overland. His work is a manifestation of a growing number of Anglo-Arab and Franco-Arab writers, emerging in the 2000s, especially authors from a Lebanese background writing in English or French, post Lebanese civil war, such as Rabih Alameddine, Nada Awar Jarrar, Wajdi Mouawad and Rawi Hage, in whose work themes of violence, loss, memory and identity are prominent. He has made numerous media appearances. As a scholar, he has authored and co-authored a large number of scientific papers on environmental sustainability, tackling issues in hydrology, sea level rise and development. He has lectured at the American University of Beirut and the University of New South Wales. He is professor of environmental engineering at the University of Sydney.