Novelist, screenwriter, columnist in Al Ahram daily, and chief editor of the first and most popular women’s magazine in the Arab region: HAWAA (since June 1993)
One of the most influential feminists in the Arab world, since 1970 author of books on different issues on Arab women and Muslim society.
Born in Cairo in 1942, she graduated from Alexandria University, Faculty of Arts, English department with a B.A. honours degree in 1962. She obtained a diploma in drama from the same department in 1964.
In 1979, she obtained her second B.A. from Cairo University, the Arabic department, where she studied the Holy Koran, the Hadith, Arabic language and Rhetoric, Arab and Islamic history , philosophy, poetry and prose.
Her first novel in 1970 Friends Forever was acclaimed by critics for expressing the inner feelings of a woman who rejects being regarded and judged as a female.
She published twenty books on travel, literature, literary criticism, politics, including four books on Islamic topics and six novels.
Most of her novels and short stories were adopted by Egyptian television or made into movies .
In 2000 she started to write radio and T.V plays
The Case of Ms. Effat, a television film based on one of her novels, was screened in Hollywood during the Women in Film Festival. The same novel was translated to Chinese among four novels expressing feminism all over the world.
She appears weekly in a 20- minute TV program to talk on current topics.
She has lectured on Women, Islam and Arab culture in a number of universities and NGOs.
Her 2002 book Al Hijab criticized the rapidly spreading phenomenon among young muslim women and disputed the claim that it is a religious ordinance.
Her latest books: Muslim Women in the Conflict of Fez versus Hat, and The New Woman , attempt to re-visit the history of Modern Egypt through the eyes of the women's movements in the nineteenth century up till the foundation of the Egyptian Women's Union in 1923.
Previous Jobs P. R. Philips Orient . Teacher of English in State of Kuwait.
Radio presenter. Editor in Sabah el Kheir and Rosel Yousef weeklies .Free-Lancer in a number of Egyptian and Arabic newspapers .
Membership Egyptian writers� Union . Press Syndicate . Pen International.
Egyptian Women Writers. .E.W.F.( Egyptian Women in Film) . Moral Rearmament ( international writers & critics group). Hearts of Egypt( an NGO).
Publications 6 novels , 2 collections of short stories ,
A Trip to Turkey.
Dialogue with Islamic Writers On Modern Topics , Diary of A Career Woman
SHE in Men's Eyes( literary criticism ) ,
Fadfada ( Free Talk in Politics ) ,
Contemplations in Ramadan ,
Love in the Bosom of Islam
Fez vs. Hat & Muslim Woman .
" New Woman" .
"Al Hijab, a Modern View" .
Scripts for T.V & Radio serials, Movie, and documentary films.
Prizes State Prize for Distinction 2004
