Fadwa Tuqan

Palestinian Poet

Born in Nablus early this century, Fadwa Tuqan is the most productive of all Arab women poets.

She is called the poet of love and pain, because her poetry deals with themes of personal and national love and loss.

Between 1958 and 1970 she published 5 volumes of poetry. Her second volume entitled "I found it" is considered as her actual mature beginning where she is more forward, more adventurous, and more courageous. Critics like Salma Al Khadra Al Jayyusi assert that she was the first Arab woman poet to talk openly about love, proclaiming that "Fadwa's mounting candor about her emotional life as portrayed in her verse remains an amazing feat of pioneering courage." Among her collections are I Found it (1958), Closed Door (1967), Horsemen of the Night (1969), and Alone on the Summit of the World (1973). Her work is represented in English translation in several major anthologies including "Modern Arabic Poetry, An Anthology (Columbia University Press, 1987).

A poet all her life, Tuqan's first attempt at writing prose is her autobiography, entitled "Difficult Journey, Mountainous Journey" her richest contribution to Arab women's literature which was first published in Arabic in 1985 and in English in 1990 by the Women's Press, London.

For an Arab woman, regardless of her age, to write an autobiography is not an easy task because of social constraints on the one hand and the constraints of the form itself on the other. However, Tuqan assumes the necessary courage to write about her childhood and adolescence in Nablus, a very conservative city, in the early decades of this century. This autobiography ends with the 1967 war. Later on it is followed by the second part entitled "The most difficult journey" which spans a segment of her life after the Israeli occupation of 1967.
Tuqan still lives in Nablus up to this day.

Source:
http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/inside.php?id=45&ed=70