Shahla Ujayli

Shahla Ujayli is a Syrian writer, born in 1976. She holds a doctorate in Modern Arabic Literature and Cultural Studies from Aleppo University in Syria and teaches Modern Arabic Literature and Aesthetics at the American University in Madaba, Jordan. She is the author of four novels: The Cat's Eye (2006), which won the Jordan State Award for Literature 2009; Persian Carpet (2012); A Sky Close to Our House (2015) which was IPAF-shortlisted in 2016; and has been published in English, and Summer with the Enemy (2018). She has also published two short story collections: The Latticed Window (2005) and Bed of the King’s Daughter (2016), which won the 2017 Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story awarded by the American University in Kuwait. Her books of literary criticism include: The Syrian Novel: Experimentalism and Theoretical Categories (2009), Cultural Particularity in the Arabic Novel (2011) and Mirror of Strangeness: Articles on Cultural Criticism (2006). Shahla Ujayli has been featured in Banipal magazine on several occasions including the publication of a short story translated by Ayane Ezaki, A Dead Hand, in the Spring 2017 issue. She took part in the IPAF nadwa (writers' workshop) for promising young writers, where she worked on a passage from A Sky Close to Our House.