Salwa Bakr
Salwa Bakr was born in Cairo in 1949, the daughter of a railway worker. She gained her BA in Business Management from .Ayan Shams University in 1972 but this did not fulfill her academic interests and hence four years later she graduated with a second BA, this time in drama criticism. She then went on to graduate study in history and literary criticism.
She began writing in the mid-1970s, and her work has been met with much critical acclaim. .Zinat fi Janasat ar-Ra.is. (Zinat at the President.s Funeral), 1985, Bakr.s first collection of short stories, was published at her own expense, but its success ensured that she had no difficulties finding publishers for her other collections, .Maqam .Atiyya. (The Shrine of Atia), 1986, .An il-Ruh al-lati Suriqat Tadrijiyyan. (On the Gradually Departing Spirit), 1989, and .Ajin al-Fallaha. (the Peasant Woman.s Dough), 1992.
Bakr lived for several years in Cyprus with her husband, where she worked as a film critic for a number of Arabic-language publications, before returning to Egypt in 1986, where she has since been concentration on her creative writing. Other pieces of Bakr.s work, published in English, in addition to .Writing as a way out., can be found in .My Grandmother.s Cactus. (1993) and .The Wiles of Men. (1992). the second of her novels, .The Golden Chariot. )al-.Araba al-dhahabiyya la Tas.ad ila-l-Sama) was published by Garnet Publishing in 1995.
Her latest novel, .Wasf al-Bulbul. (Describing the Nightingale) was published in 1993.
Bakr.s life and work have been greatly affected by the 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt by Israel- an event which she herself described as the first of many defeats. the repression in all the spheres of Egyptian life and in particular the political sphere is perhaps Bakr.s greatest concern. however, she maintains that both men and women can be liberated through the contributions of women.s writings.
This information was collected from In the House of Silence, autobiographical Essays by Arab women Writers, Edited By Fadia Faqir, Garnet Publishing, United Kingdom. 1998