Three Moroccan Women Qualify for Paris Literature Contest Finals

Rabat – Morocco’s Hayat Chrif, Sofia Benani, and Karima Echcherki are in the running for the Rene Depestre 2023 Prize in literature. The three women were selected together with 44 other authors as finalists for this inaugural edition.

Bennani took part in the competition with her poetry collection “Fragments of life,” while Chrif presented her play “The train of life.”

Echcherki reached the finals with her novel “Taxi terminus.”

The Rene Depestre Prize, which comes with a trophy, a certificate, and a symbolic money prize, will be awarded on November 18 in Paris.

Serving as the jury for the 2023 edition is French-Moroccan writer and novelist Rachida Belkacem. The prize is organized by the Paris-based Adventus Nova association, with the support of Editions Milot-Paris.

The prize seeks to spotlight emerging authors from all over the world, honoring rising writers from the French, Creole, English, and Spanish-speaking cultures. It also welcomed works in a variety of literary genres such as novels, short stories, essays, and poetry.

According to the Adventus Nova association, the Rene Depestre Prize’s guiding principles are the intrinsic value of the works and the authors’ ambition to share the story of the world.

Moroccan women have been making strides in various fields at the international scale. On June 6, Fadwa Moussahim, Suad Miskeen, and Belkacem El Jattari took home the Khalifa Educational Award in a ceremony conducted in UAE capital Abu Dhabi.