Somaya Ramadan

Somaya Yehia Ramadan is an Egyptian academic, translator and award-winning writer. She was born in Cairo in 1951 and studied English at Cairo University. Subsequently, she obtained a PhD in English from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. She is a convert from Islam to the Bahá'í Faith.

Ramadan's first two books were short story collections - Khashab wa Nohass (Brass and Wood, 1995) and Manazel el-Kamar (Phases of the Moon, 1999). Her first novel Awraq Al-Nargis (Leaves of Narcissus) was published to great acclaim in 2001 and won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal. It was then translated into English by Marilyn Booth and is available from the AUC Press.

Ramadan has also worked extensively as a translator. Among her notable translations is Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. She is a founding member of the Women and Memory Forum, a non-profit organisation, and teaches English and Translation at the National Academy of Arts in Cairo.