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.

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