Susan Brind Morrow is the author of The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts and a 2022 recipient of the award in literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Her ICWA fellowship in 1988–1990 in northeast Africa was devoted to desert traditions and perceptions of nature among the Beja between Egypt and Sudan, with a particular interest in the origin of hieroglyphs in the desert environment. It culminated in her first book, The Names of Things: A Passage in the Egyptian Desert, one of three finalists for the PEN Martha Albrand Award in 1998. As an undergraduate and graduate student in the classics department at Columbia University, Susan also studied hieroglyphic texts. After a first trip to Egypt as an archaeologist on the Dakhleh Oasis Project, she went to live and study in Egypt and Sudan between 1982 and 1990. Her first publications were translations of Arabic poetry and essays on the Arabic Oral Tradition. A former fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, Susan’s other books include Water: Poems and Drawings and Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Nation, the Seneca Review, and Lapham’s Quarterly.