May Telmissany Explained

May Telmissany (Arabic : مي التلمساني) (born 1 July 1965) is an Egyptian-Canadian novelist, translator, film critic and academic. She teaches Arabic studies and cinema at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Biography

May Telmissany was born in Cairo, Egypt, on 1 July 1965.[1] She is the daughter of Egyptian documentary filmmaker Abdel-Kader El-Telmissany (1924-2003). Telmissany first studied French literature at Ain Shams University.[2] She worked for several years in the French Service of Radio Cairo[Which one?] and in the Arts Faculty at Menoufia University. She also lived for a time in Paris. In 1995, she obtained a master's degree in French literature from Cairo University. She moved to Canada in 1998 for her doctoral studies, eventually completing her PhD in 2007 from the University of Montreal under a CIDA scholarship. She has since taught at the universities of Montréal, Concordia, McGill and Ottawa.[3]

Telmissany wrote her first novel Dunyazad (1997) in her native Arabic. It was critically acclaimed and translated into French, English, Spanish and German. Dunyazad also won the 2002 Ulysses Prize for best first novel in France and the 2002 State Prize for best autobiographical novel in Egypt. Her second novel Heliopolis came out in 2001 and was translated into French in 2002. In 2009, she published a collection of fragments on her experience in Canada and her successive returns to Egypt, titled Lel-Ganna Sour (Paradise has a fence). In 2012, she published her third novel, A Capella. Her 2021 novel They all say I love you was longlisted for the 2023 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It deals with the romantic relationships of "five middle-aged, middle class Arab intellectuals living in Canada and America", and an excerpt was published in English translation by ArabLit magazine in August 2023.[4]

Telmissany has also written in French and English on a wide range of scholarly interests, e.g. essays, articles and book chapters on cinema, photography, literature and Cairo culture. Along with Robert Solé and Mercédès Volait, she co-edited a book of memoirs on the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Her doctoral dissertation on the concept of neighbourhoods in Egyptian cinema has been translated into Arabic and published in Cairo. She has also published literary translations from French and English to Arabic.[5]

In 2021, she was awarded the French Order for Arts and Letters in recognition of her contributions in the fields of culture, arts and literature.[6]

Selected works

Literary

Translations

External links

Notes and References

  1. http://penatlas.org/online/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=151&Itemid=16 Profile in English PEN World Atlas
  2. Web site: May Telmissany - Egyptian Writer مي التلمساني كاتبة مصرية. www.arabworldbooks.com. 30 November 2017.
  3. Web site: May Telmissany International Prize for Arabic Fiction . 2023-08-23 . arabicfiction.org.
  4. Web site: 2023-08-22 . From May Telmissany’s ‘Everyone Says I Love You’ . 2023-08-23 . ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY . en-US.
  5. Web site: University of Ottawa . Members of Faculty of Arts, Literature and Society - May Telmissany . 2023-08-23 . uniweb.uottawa.ca . en.
  6. Web site: Assrah . Walaa El . 2021-11-17 . May El Telmissany chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres . 2023-08-23 . Le Progrès Egyptien . en-US.

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