Fadhil Al-Azzawi was born 1940 in Kirkuk, Iraq. He studied English Literature at Baghdad University, earning a BA degree. He then studied at Leipzig University in Germany and earned a PhD in the cultural journalism. He edited a number of literary magazines in Iraq and abroad and founded a the magazine Shi`r 69 (Poetry 69).

His poetry and prose texts have been published in the leading Arab literary magazines since the early sixties and his books printed in many Arab countries. He has published more than twenty books (novels, poetry collections and prose texts); and he has translated many works German and English into Arabic, and Arabic poems into German and English.

He left Iraq in 1977 and has lived since 1983 in Berlin. His poems and some of his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He has participated in many international literary festivals in the Arab World, Europe and America.