Syrian writer Sanaa Aoun joins us for residency in June

We are delighted to announce our third resident of 2021 nominated by Norwegian Pen is Sanaa Aoun.

Sanaa Aoun is an author and teacher from Damascus, Syria and came to Tromsø, Norway as a free city author in 2016. Aoun has published two collections of short stories in Arabic, Red Lifelines (2007) and To Where the Compass Points (2018), and continues to be a regular contributor to Arabic online newspapers. In Norwegian, her texts have been published in Klassekampen and in the anthology For Folk Flest (2017). In June 2018, her monologue A Half Woman was performed at Hålogaland Theater. Several of her texts have been translated into English and German.

During her residency in June, Aoun will be working towards completing her novel which started in early 2020 during the first waves of Covid-19. Written from a personal perspective of a women in exile, the novel explores the relationship between homeland and exile, looking at the nature of Northern Norway, the female psyche and the links between Norwegian and Syrian life.

You can read more about Sanaa Aoun here.