Ghada Abdel Aal ( born 1978 in

El Mahalla El Kubra El Mahalla El Kubra (, ) – commonly shortened to ' – is the largest city of the Gharbia Governorate and in the Nile Delta, with a population of 535,278 as of 2012. It is a large industrial and agricultural city in Egypt, located in the middle ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

) is an Egyptian author and screenwriter, best known for her satirical blog and book '' Wanna be a bride'' (; ). She is a winner of the 2012 Bauer Prize at the Venice International Literary Festival, and the Golden Pyramid award at the Cairo Arabic Media Festival.

Life and career

Ghada Abdel Aal was born on 21 December 1978 in

, Egypt. Her mother was a public relations worker, while her father was an engineer. She studied

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

at college. Abdel Aal started on a career as a pharmacist at a hospital pharmacy in her hometown. In 2006, encountering a variety of marriage proposals, she began a blog ''Wanna be a bride''/''I Wanna Get Married'', satirising the experiences of Egyptian women whom society expects only to marry and have children. As the blog became popular, she was approached by a publishing house, Dar El Shorouk, to convert her writings to a book. The eponymous book, written in a colloquial Arabic, was published in 2008 and became a bestseller in the Arab world. The book was translated to English by Nora Eltahawy in 2010. There are also German, Italian and Dutch translations. Abdel Aal wrote the screenplay adaptation of the book, which won the Golden Pyramid Prize at the Cairo Arabic Media Festival. Her book was also awarded the 2012 Bauer Prize at the Venice International Literary Festival. An alumna of the International Writing Program's Fall Residency (2010), she wrote a screenplay for a political comedy ''The Night They Arrested Egypt''. In 2014, a 30-episode television satire series ''Embratoreyet Meen?'' (''Whose Empire?'') written by her began showing in Egypt. She writes a humorous column for the newspaper ''

Al-Shorouk ''Al-Shorouk'', ''Shorouk News'' or ''Al-Shuruq'' ( "The Sunrise") is a prominent Arabic newspaper published in Egypt and several other Arabic nations. It is a daily independent liberal-oriented newspaper, covering mainly politics, militant af ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abdel Aal, Ghada Egyptian humorists 21st-century Egyptian women writers 21st-century Egyptian writers Egyptian women journalists 1978 births International Writing Program alumni Living people Women humorists