Nasri Atallah

Early life

Nasri Atallah was born and grew up in London, United Kingdom, where he attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. His parents, Samir Atallah and May Francis, are both British-Lebanese and were living in London at the time. His father, Samir Atallah, is a prominent Arab author, journalist and thinker, and the winner of many awards for his decades of contribution to Arab literature.

Atallah moved to Beirut for the first time in 1997, finished school and read politics at the American University of Beirut. He then headed back to London to study for a Masters in International politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing a dissertation on the Deterritorialization of Identity Through Transnational Media. After some further back and forth, he now resides in Paris, France.

Career

After his studies, Atallah worked at the United Nations Development Programme for 6 months, on the Arab Human Development Report, before joining Energy Intelligence, a company specialised in oil & gas research, when he was an analyst and writer. In 2007, he joined the wealth management firm UBS in London, before quitting in 2009 to concentrate on creative pursuits.

During a brief stint at JWT as a conceptual copywriter, Atallah kept a blog entitled Our Man in Beirut which earned him notoriety amongst the Lebanese community both in Lebanon and abroad. His often scathing criticism of social mores earned him both fans and detractors. The blog’s success led to a publishing deal with Turning Point books, and the print version was released in December 2011 in Beirut, with book signings at Waterstones in London and at the Salon Du Livre de Paris.

Atallah is Partner and media strategist at Keeward, a creative agency that accompanies and creates projects in the fields of media and technology. Through a joint-venture with the company, he founded Bookwitty-Keeward's Artist-in-Residence program, Gate37, in 2014. It has focussed on artists with a cross-cultural approach to music and storytelling, such as The Wanton Bishops, Lumi and Wake Island.

Since May 2016, he has been Head of Media Partnerships for rapidly-growing book discovery platform Bookwitty.

According to press interviews, Atallah has a second book in the works. While it was supposed to be a fictional revenge fantasy about the excesses of London’s Eurotrash subculture in the mid to late 2000s, Atallah's focus has shifted and it is now turning into a collection of short stories about Beirut.

Books

Music Management

From September 2012, Atallah launched the career of the prominent Lebanese blues rock revival duo, The Wanton Bishops, through his role as their manager at creative incubator Keeward. He has also worked with Egyptian electro-singer and producer Bosaina, Montreal indie band Wake Island, and krautrock band Lumi.

Other Work

Atallah has also written for various publications, including The Guardian, GQ Magazine, Time Out, Brownbook and L'Orient-Le Jour. He also hosted a video series at the Cannes Film Festival for 35mm From Beirut, where he interviewed leading Lebanese actors and directors such as Razane Jammal, Philippe Aractingi, Darina Al Joundi, Maroun Baghdadi's wife Souraya and Swiss rapper La Gale.

Atallah has also appeared on the BBC and Al Jazeera English as a commentator on Middle East affairs.

Personal life

Atallah is married to award-winning Lebanese fashion designer Nour Hage. The couple have been together since 2013.