Author Talk: Yara El-Ghadban

Born in 1976, YARA EL-GHADBAN is a Palestinian-Canadian novelist and anthropologist. Her books explore the lives of men, women and children who dream of a future despite history, colonial violence and exile. She is the author of four novels published by Mémoire d’encrier. Her most recent,  La danse des flamants roses (2024), winner of the Mare Nostrum Prize for best Mediterranean novel, is shortlisted for the Frontières Prize and Prix des lycéens de la region des Pays de la Loire in France. Yara El-Ghadban wrote her first novel L’ombre de l’olivier in 2011. She published Le parfum de Nour in 2015 and Je suis Ariel Sharon in 2018. The latter won the Blue Metropolis Diversity Prize in 2019. Je suis Ariel Sharon has been translated into English, Arabic and German. In 2021, she co-authored with Rodney Saint-Éloi the essay Les racistes n’ont jamais vu la mer, a finalist for the 2022 Prix des libraires in Québec. Yara El-Ghadban was awarded the 2017 Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts for her contribution to Canadian literature. She lives and writes in Montreal.