Nidaa Khoury

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Nidaa Khoury (born 1959 in Fassuta, Israel) is an Arab-Israeli poet and a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University. She is the first Arab-Israeli poet included in Israel’s Bagrut literature curriculum.

Khoury grew up in a family from Aleppo, left school at 17 after marrying, and has four children. After nine years working in a bank, she pursued higher education: philosophy and comparative literature at Haifa University; a master’s in education at Latvia University; studies in management at Tel Aviv University; and a directorship course at Ben-Gurion University. She has published 13 poetry books, many translated into other languages. Her book Book of Sins (2011) was translated into English and nominated for the Warwick Prize. The Book of the Flaw (2011) is a modernist work that critiques Christian rituals and religious authority and was published after initial rejection in the Arab world.

Since 2005 she has taught in the Hebrew Literature Department at Ben-Gurion University, becoming a senior lecturer in 2009 and a full professor in 2013. She has led the conflict resolution admissions committee since 2014 and has taught in the Department of Middle East Studies. She is active in human rights and has participated in more than 30 international conferences and festivals. Khoury also translates and edits poetry between Hebrew and Arabic and works to support the rights of unrecognized Arab villages in Israel.