Chantal Chawaf

Chantal Chawaf (born 1943) is a French writer.

Biography
Chawaf was born in Paris during World War II. After studying art and literature at l'École du Louvre, she married and lived in Damascus for seven years where she had two children. She also traveled and lived for some years in Europe and North America.

In 1974, she published, her first book, with Editions des Femmes, the feminist press created by activists in the MLF (Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes) centered around French feminist Antoinette Fouque. Chawaf’s first book, Retable, la rêverie, started what critics called "Écriture féminine", along with the works of Hélène Cixous, Catherine Clément, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray. Other key texts by Chawaf include Cercoeur (1975) and Maternité (1979).

In her books, Chawaf explores the mother-daughter relationship and attempts to realize the potential of words to free the female unconscious, to de-intellectualize the body and to give voice to an inner experience. Chantal Chawaf's work on birth and life-giving leads, in her last decade books, to an eco-critique of contemporary society (Melusine des détritus).

She has traveled frequently in the United States where her work has been translated and studied. She also edited a collection at a publishing house in Paris from 2000 to 2010.

Non fictional writings

 * Le corps et le verbe, la langue en sens inverse (essay), 1992, Presses de la Renaissance
 * L'Erotique des mots, with Régine Deforges, 2004, Editions du Rocher
 * L'identité inachevée, with Adonis, 2004, Editions du Rocher

Translated books

 * Redemption, translated by Monique F. Nagem, 1992, Dalkey Archive Press
 *  Mother Love, Mother Earth, translated by M. F. Nagem, 1993, Garland Publishing
 *  Warmth: a bloodsong in "Plays by French and Francophone Women", translated by par C.P. Makward et J.G. Miller, 1994, University of Michigan Press: 233-246
 *  Fées de Toujours, with Jinane Chawaf ; translated in Arabic by Samia Esber, 2000, Ministère de la Culture de Syrie, Damas