Nassira Belloula
(CA)

Nassira Belloula is a Francophone novelist, essayist, journalist, and poet, of Algerian origin and based in Montreal. She published her first work, The Gates of the sun in the early 1980s, when she was twenty years old, a collection of poems mostly written during her high-school years.

In 1993, she joined the so-called "independent" press in Algeria, where she worked as a journalist in French-language daily newspapers. Belloula was the editor-in-chief in charge of the social and cultural sections up until 2010 when she moved to Quebec. She was a member of the Algerian PEN Center. In 2012, she resumed her studies at the University of Montreal, where she obtained a degree in History, and a bachelor's of Arts and Sciences. She is currently a member of The Parliament of Francophone Authors.

Belloula has to her credit fifteen books, focusing on the Écriture Féminine (women's writing) in Algeria and the status and condition of women. She has books published by Fayard Editions in France, La Pleine Lune Editions, and Hashtag Editions in Quebec and Chihab Editions in Algeria. In fall 2021, Verlag Donata Kinzelbach (Mainz) published Marias Zitronenbaum, a translation of Belloula's novel Aimer Maria, which was nominated for several awards.

(Photo © the artist)