Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972. In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986); The Arab Apocalypse (1989); In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005); Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry, Night (2016), and Surge (2018). Time, a volume of her poems translated from French into English by Sarah Riggs, received the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Adnan’s paintings have been widely exhibited, including Documenta 13, the Whitney Biennial, The New Museum, SFMOMA, and Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern and the Serpentine Galleries have mounted retrospectives of her work. She now lives in France.