August 19, 2014

2014Samih al-Qasim, Palestinian poet and journalist (born 1939)^[†]

Samīħ al-Qāsim al Kaissy was a Palestinian poet with Israeli citizenship whose work is well known throughout the Arab world. He was born in Transjordan and later lived in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Before the Six-Day War in 1967 he was mainly influenced by Arab nationalism; after the war he joined the Israeli Communist Party.

2014Simin Behbahani, Iranian poet and activist (born 1927)^[†]

Simin Behbahani, her surname also appears as Bihbahani was a prominent Iranian contemporary poet, lyricist, and activist. Renowned for her mastery of the ghazal, a traditional poetic form, she became an icon of modern Persian poetry. The Iranian intelligentsia and literati affectionately referred to her as the "Lioness of Iran."

2014James Foley, American photographer and journalist (born 1973)^[†]

James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012 in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen executed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

2014Candida Lycett Green, Anglo-Irish journalist and author (born 1942)^[†]

Candida Rose Lycett Green was a British author who wrote sixteen books including English Cottages, Goodbye London, The Perfect English House, Over the Hills and Far Away and The Dangerous Edge of Things. Her television documentaries included The Englishwoman and the Horse, and The Front Garden. Unwrecked England, based on a regular column of the same name she wrote for The Oldie from 1992, was published in 2009.