Inaam Kachachi
2009 Mentor
Inaam Kachachi is an Iraqi writer, born in Baghdad in 1952. She studied journalism at Baghdad University, working in Iraqi press and radio before moving to Paris to complete a PhD at the Sorbonne. She is currently the Paris correspondent for London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat and Kol Al-Usra magazine in Sharjah, UAE. Kachachi has published a biography, Lorna, about the British journalist Lorna Hales, who was married to the famous pioneering Iraqi sculptor Jawad Salim, and a book in French about Iraqi women's literature produced in times of war. She produced and directed a documentary about Naziha Al Dulaimi, the first woman to become minister of an Arab country, in 1959. Her first novel Heart Springs appeared in 2005 and her second novel The American Granddaughter, was shortlisted for IPAF in 2009. An English translation of the novel was published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing in 2010.