Tarek El-Ariss is an author, a scholar, and the James Wright Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. Born and raised in Beirut during the Civil War (1975-90) and trained in philosophy, literary studies, and visual and cultural studiesat the American University of Beirut, Rochester, and Cornell, his work deals with questions of displacement, war, and desire. He has written about disoriented travelers, outcasts, queers, hackers, and characters with complicated relations to home and power. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, and Choice.

In 2021, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete his forthcoming book, Water on Fire: A Memoir of War.