Zulaikha Aburisha

Zulaikha Aburisha is a Jordanian poet, columnist, researcher, human rights and women’s rights activist. She has published numerous studies of feminist criticism, literature and art, and papers on gender and language, in Jordanian and Arab newspapers and magazines. She is the author of 10 volumes of poetry, a short story collection entitled In the Cell (1987), four children’s stories, and a study of children’s literature: Towards a Theory of Children’s Literature (2002). Her two books of feminist linguistic criticism are: The Female of the Language: Studies of Discourse and Gender (2009) and The Absent Language: Towards a Non-Gendered Language (2014). As an activist for civil society, she is a member or director of a number of local, Arab and international organisations in this field. She has worked in education and as a university lecturer, as well as being editor of The Teacher/The Student (Unesco/UNRWA) and Al-Funun (Jordanian Ministry of Culture) magazines. She sits on the editing board of several cultural magazines, including Al-Afkar (Jordanian Ministry of Culture) and Awraq (Jordanian Writers’ Union), and has been a judge for Arab literary prizes. Her poetry has been translated into English, French, German and Korean.