Rana al-Tonsi

Al-Tonsi was born on 27 November 1981 in Cairo and attended the American University in Cairo.[1] She started writing when she was young and published her first book before she was 20 years old.[1] Her first collection, The House From Which Music Came was published to critical acclaim.[1]

Al-Tonsi's writing addresses themes of violence, rebellion, motherhood and intimacy.[2]

Since her first publication, works include:

• A Rose for the Last Days (Merit House, Cairo, 2002)[3]
• A Homeland Called Desire (Merit House, Cairo, 2005)
• Short History (Arab Renaissance House, Beirut, 2006)
• Kisses (Merit House, Cairo, 2010)
• Happiness (Prut, 2012)
• When I'm Not in the Air, Poetry (Jamal Publications, Beirut, 2014)
• The Book of Games (Orientals for Publishing, Cairo, 2015)[4]
• Index of Fear (Dar Al-Ain Publishing, Cairo, 2018)

Al-Tonsi is viewed as an important voice in the middle-generation of women poets who have published since the 1980s.[5]

The late Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad, the star of her third work, "A Homeland Called Desire", said that Rana Al-Tonsi "carries the concerns of an orphan generation rejecting the experience of the fathers who inherited the homeland."[6] Egyptian critic Salah Fadl, says of Rana's Tunisian Poem that it "does not rely on a continuous narrative, for a single story ... but rather composes fragments of spaced parts … It ranges from the outside to the self, from sense to abstract morality ..."[6]