Maram al-Masri Syria

Maram al-Masri is from Lattakia in Syria, now settled
in Paris. She studied English Literature at Damascus
University before starting publishing her poetry in Arab
magazines in the 1970s. Today she is considered one of the
most acknowledged, influential and captivating feminine
voices of her generation and to date her work has been
translated into eleven languages, including French, German,
English, Italian , Spanish, Serbian, Corsican and Turkish.

In addition to numerous poems published in literary
journals, several Arab anthologies and various international
anthologies, she has published four collections of poems,
the first of which, I Threaten You with a White Dove, appeared
in 1987. Her second collection, A Red Cherry on a White-tiled
Floor, followed ten years later in 1997 and was published
in French translation by Éditions PHA in 2003. It was also
translated into English by Khaled Mattawa and published
in a bilingual edition in 2004 by Bloodaxe Books. In 2007, the
publishing house Al Manar released her third collection, I
Look at You, a book that was initially published in Beirut and
which was awarded the Prix de la Poésie de la SGDL. Her
fourth collection, Barefoot Souls, published in 2009, won the
Prix des Découvreurs in 2011, and the Prix Poés Yvelines in
the same year.

Maram al-Masri has participated in many international
festivals of poetry in France and abroad,including the
first-ever Arab author event at the Dublin Writers Festival,
2004. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious
literary prizes, including the Adonis Prize of the Lebanese
Cultural Forum for the best creative work in Arabic in 1998,
the Premio Citta di Calopezzati for the section Poesie de
la Mediterranée, the Prix d’Automne 2007 of the Société des
gens de letters, Il Fiore d’Argento 2015 for cultural
excellence and the Premio Laurentum per la Poesia 2015,
Dante Alighieri award.

(2015)