Amalia Kahana-Carmon

Amalia Kahana-Carmon was born at Kibbutz Ein Harod, and was raised in Tel Aviv. During the War of Independence, she served as an army wireless operator in a Palmah combat unit and took active part in several military operations. She studied philology and library science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kahana-Carmon has been writer-in-residence at Tel Aviv and Oxford Universities, has lectured widely and taught creative writing at the Open University. From the outset, her narrative style and subject matter were unique, totally different from those of her male peers. Her writing was immediately recognized as one of the high points of Hebrew fiction and influenced many women writers who came after her. Kahana-Carmon published her first collection of stories, Under One Roof, in 1966 to great acclaim, and has since published novels, novellas, short stories and essays. She has received many major awards including the Brenner Prize (1985), the Neuman Prize (1990), the Bialik Prize (1994), the ACUM Prize (1995), the President`s Prize (1997) and the Israel Prize for Literature (2000). In 2007, her collection of stories, Under One Roof, was named one of the ten most important books since the creation of the State of Israel.

Photo by: Dan Porges