Lina Atfah

Lina Atfah was born in Salamiyah, Syria, in 1989. She studied Arabic literature in Damascus. She has been living in Herne since 2014, after being forced to leave Syria for political reasons.

In 2017, she began collaborating on the “Weiter Schreiben” (Keep Writing) project, working with her tandem partner Nino Haratischwili and other German authors and translators.

In 2017, she received the “Hertha Koenig Prize” for young writers, after being nominated by Nino Haratischwili.

In 2019, Pendragon Verlag published her first bilingual poetry collection in Germany, Das Buch von der fehlenden Ankunft (The Book of the Missing Arrival), which was awarded the 2020 LiBeraturpreis for best books translated into German.

In 2023, she received the Ruhr Literature Prize for her second poetry collection, “Grabtuch aus Schmetterlingen” (Shroud of Butterflies). And in 2024, she received the NRW Literature Promotion Prize.