Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Vénus Khoury-Ghata is a Lebanese poet and novelist and a long-time resident of Paris. She is the author of seventeen novels, including Une Maison aux bord des larmes, La Maestra and La fille qui marchait dans le désert and fifteen collections of poems, most recently Quelle est la nuit parmi les nuits (Mercure de France, 2006). Four collections of her poems and one novel are available in English in Marilyn Hacker’s translation, including Alphabets of Sand (Carcanet Press, 2008) and Nettles (Graywolf Press, 2008).

Recipient of the Académie Française prize in poetry in 2009, she was named an Officer of the Légion d’honneur the following year. The poems ‘In the village of the mothers’ and ‘What can be said about the women who hunt down darkness with their dishtowels’ are from a new collection, Où vont les arbres, to be published next year.