Kholoud Charaf

Charaf studied Arabic literature at Damascus University and is a graduate of medical laboratory science. Kholoud Charaf campaigns for the rights of children and women in Syria. She is a member of the German PEN organization.

In 2019, she received the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Writing for her book Journey Back to the Mountain: Diary in the Shadow of War. Her novel Diary: It Doesn’t Concern Me was nominated for the 2024 Arab Booker Prize, the Katara Prize, and the 2024 Best Arabic Book of the Year Award.

She has received international scholarships as a guest writer from ICORN, PEN Center Germany, and IIE American, and was a guest writer in Vienna from 2023 to 2025 with a scholarship from IG. Her poems have been translated into ten languages, including German, English, and Polish.

Kholoud’s text “The Color Black and Birds in Arabic Language and Culture” is printed in manuskripte #249.

The novel “Diary That Has Nothing to Do with Me” will be published in 2026 by Pfaueninsel Verlag (Berlin).

From September to December 2025, she was a fellow at the Residency for Artists in Exile at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Publications

With All My Faces, Klever Verlag, Vienna 2024

Diary: It Doesn’t Concern Me, Alsaqi Publishing House, Lebanon, 2023

Asrar (Secrets), Amjad Publishing House, Jordan, 2022

Journey Back to the Mountain: Diary in the Shadow of War, Abu Dhabi, 2019

Reversal Sky, Znak Publishing House Krakow, 2019

Rufat Farasha (The Remains of the Butterfly), Syria, 2016