Rose Ghorayeb | |
Birth Date: | 1909 |
Birth Place: | Damour, Lebanon |
Death Date: | 2006 (97 years old) |
Nationality: | Lebanese |
Occupation: | Writer, Author, Professor |
Years Active: | 70 |
Rose Ghorayeb (Arabic: روز غريّب, born 1909 – died 2006) was a Lebanese writer, author, literary critic, and feminist. She was a professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese American University and was frequently referred to as the "first female critic in Arabic literature".[1] Regarded as a pioneer in aesthetic criticism, her literary career spanned more than 70 years and included many children stories, articles, biographies and plays.[2] [3]
Ghorayeb was born in Damour, Lebanon in 1909.[4] In 1932, she graduated from the American Junior College for Women in Beirut, a predecessor to the Lebanese American University. In 1948, the college renamed itself the Beirut College for Women.[5] She later became the head of the college's Arabic department.
She published extensively in many regional Arabic magazines and journals from 1943 to 1980.[6] As a women's rights activist, she regularly wrote for the Lebanese monthly magazine The Woman's Voice.[1] She also frequently published articles in the Voice of Bahrain, Bahrain's first magazine, and this was believed to have played a role in the introduction of new social ideas in the country.[7] Amongst her most notable works was a biography on the Lebanese-Palestinian poet May Ziadeh, who was regarded as a pioneer in Middle Eastern feminism in the early 20th century.[8] [9] From 1983 to 1993, she served as the editor of Al-Raida, the journal of the Lebanese American University's Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World.[1]