Mahmoud Darwish was a celebrated Palestinian poet and author, widely regarded as Palestine's national poet. He was born on March 13, 1941, and passed away on August 9, 2008. Darwish's work often used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile.

In 1988, Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, a pivotal document for the creation of a State of Palestine. Throughout his career, he won numerous awards, including the Lotus Prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers in 1969, the Lenin Peace Prize from the USSR in 1983, the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters from France in 1993, and the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2001.

Beyond poetry, Darwish served as an editor for several literary magazines in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He wrote primarily in Arabic but was also fluent in English, French, and Hebrew. Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet, described Darwish's work as "the essential breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging."