Mekkawi Said was born in Cairo in 1955 and studied accounting at Cairo University. He is a scriptwriter and author, and runs the publishing house »ad-Dar« in Cairo, which has made a reputation based on a small, select fiction programme brought out in fine editions. He has won literary prizes,
Mansoura Ezz Eldin was born in 1976 in a small village in the Nile Delta in Egypt. She studied journalism and media studies at Cairo University. While still a student she began writing short stories which were published in the major Arabic cultural publications. She has been working as an
born in 1956, is Professor of Mathematics at Cairo University and an »Egyptian revolutionary« (aljazeera.com). For over thirty years, she has been an activist for human and women’s rights in her country. Since 2004, she has also been a strong advocate for the independence of the universities.
Hassan Hammad was born in Cairo in 1961 and studied Arabic language and literature. In 2002 he graduated with a dissertation on the use of irony in Nagib Machfuz’s stories. Hammad has been living in Switzerland since 1999, where he founded the Lisan publishing house in 2004 and, two years
Hani Shukrallah was born in Egypt in 1950 and studied Political Science. He worked as editor-in-chief at ‘Al-Ahram Weekly’; in his column ‘Reflections’ he wrote about the Egyptian state and political society, political Islam, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, “the War on Terror” and Iraq. He is a member of the Egyptian
“When one makes children’s books, one actually makes them first and foremost for oneself, for the child that one was and, wishfully, still is.” Grégoire Solotareff is a child of various cultures. He was born in 1953 in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of the Lebanese doctor Henri El-Kayem, and the
Girgis Shoukry was born to a Coptic family in Sohaq, Egypt, in 1967. After studying commerce he graduated as a critic from the National Arts Academy. The poet makes his living as an art and drama critic for a radio and television magazine and is also co-editor of the newspaper
Golo was born in Bayonne in France in 1948. He has worked an illustrator for various French and Egyptian periodicals since the early 1970s. When he first travelled to Cairo in 1973, he fell in love with the city. He regularly returned before relocating there in 1993. He works for
born in 1984, studied English and runs the blog »Ma’a Nafsi« (tr: With Myself). After three years the Egyptian publisher Al Shorouk asked for permission to publish her articles in book form. Mahmoud tries to capture the warm details and moments that would otherwise go unnoticed. The book has now
Fatima Naoot is an Egyptian poet, translator and architect. Born in Cairo in 1964, she studied architecture at the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. Following her graduation in 1987, she worked as an architect for Sabbour Consultants for ten years. Then she decided to abandon her career as an
Ezzedine Choukri Fishere was born in Kuwait in 1966 and grew up in Egypt. He studied political science at Cairo University, administration at the École Nationale d’Administration in Paris, International Relations in Ottawa, and obtained his doctorate in political science at the Université de Montréal. Fishere was a diplomat in
Emad Fouad was born 1974 in Al Farouniya, a village in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, and grew up in Shobra Elkhema. He studied journalism in Cairo and Ghent, and has worked as a freelance journalist for several Arabic newspapers and magazines. Fouad, who mixes Maṣri (Egyptian Arabic) with
