Background
May Telmissany is the daughter of Egyptian documentary pioneer Abdel-Kader el-Telmissany (1924-2003).
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
May Telmissany
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied French literature at Ain Shams University. She moved to Canada in 1998 for her doctoral studies, eventually completing her Doctor of Philosophy in 2007 from the University of Montreal under a Canadian International Development Agency scholarship.
Career
She now teaches Arabic studies and cinema in the University of Ottawa, in Canada. She worked for several years in the French Service of Radio Cairo and in the Arts Faculty at Menoufia University. She also lived for a time in Paris.
In 1995, she obtained a Masters in French literature from Cairo University.
She has since taught at the universities of Montréal, Concordia, McGill and Ottawa. Her first novel Dunyazad (1997) was critically acclaimed and translated into French, English, Spanish and German.
Her second novel Heliopolis came out in 2001, and it was translated into French in 2002. In 2009, she published a collection of fragments on her experience in Canada and her successive returns to Egypt, titled Lel-Ganna Sour (The Paradise Has a Fence).
In 2012, she published her third novel, A Capella.
Telmissany has also written on a wide range of scholarly interests, e.g. essays, articles and book chapters on cinema, photography, literature and Cairo culture. Along with Robert Solé and Mercédès Volait, she has co-edited a book of memoirs on the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Her doctoral dissertation on the concept of neighbourhoods in Egyptian cinema has been translated into Arabic and published in Cairo.
She has also done extensive translations from French and English to Arabic.
