Dina Mohamed Abd Elsalam (Egypt) was born in Alexandria in 1976 and graduated from the English Department of the Arts College of Alexandria University in 1998. She obtained an MA in 2005 and a doctorate in Literary Criticism in 2010. She currently teaches literary criticism, classical literature and film studies in the same department. Her first novel, A Text Abandoned by Its Heroes, was published in 2012. She has directed two short films which have been shown at a number of Arab and international festivals and won several prizes.