Nawal is a mixed-race Ghanaian Lebanese immigrant by way of the U.K. Her work appears or is forthcoming in North American Review, RHINO, Fence, Texas Review, Bayou Magazine and elsewhere. Her second manuscript, an improvised song is likely to come apart and scatter in infinite directions, was a finalist in both the University of Pittsburgh's 2021 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics Book Prize and the 2021 Autumn House Press Full-Length Poetry Contest. Nawal is affiliate faculty in Regis University's Master of Arts in Literature program and the founding editor-in-chief of the art and literary magazine, Inverted Syntax. She is the mother of four children and lives in Colorado with her partner and their two beagles.