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Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 19581972. In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (19541962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (19591975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, ""an American poet."" In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers-first for Al Safa, then for L'Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986) The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. In 2014, she was awarded one of France's highest cultural honors: l'Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Many of her poems have been put to music by Tania Leon, Henry Treadgill, Gavin Bryars, Zad Moultaka, Annea Lockwood, and Bun Ching Lam. Her paintings have been widely exhibited, including Documenta 13, the 2014 Whitney Biennial, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, The New Museum, and Museum der Moderne Salzburg. In 2014, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art mounted a retrospective of her work.
Awards: Winner The 2013 Lambda Book Prize in Poetry (Lesbian Poetry) Winner: The 2013 California Book Award in Poetry Runner-Up: The 2013 Arab American Book Award Review Quote: This is the vision of an artist who has seen and thought much, and whose concern for the universe of which she counts herself a citizen runs deep... Sea and Fog concerns itself with universal forces, refusing to shy away from the most tragic repeating cycles of human nature: departure, death, war, and love. Hope, in its conventional form, may not be present in these pages, but deep understanding that may lead us there-that, perhaps, we may read into the endless motion of Adnan's fog-fringed sea. -Lambda Literary Review Etel Adnan sharpens the starkness of the world of matter and anti-matter. These texts are psalms that stretch from the sublime to the violent, journey from Yosemite Valley to a soldier's jeep in the desert, and gather from Dostoevsky to Scalapino. A history, a gospel, a prayer book, it dwells in the divine. -Elmaz Abinader
