(1953-  ) 

Writer, educator, trainer and mother, Mishka Mojabber Mourani was born in Alexandria, Egypt of a Lebanese father and Greek mother. By the age of six she spoke several languages, including French, Greek, Arabic and Italian, but English was the one most used in her multicultural family. Her love of reading and of writing began at an early age.   

At the age of 10 she moved to Beirut with her family, and a few years later they emigrated to Sydney, Australia, where she finished high school and joined Sydney University.

She returned to Beirut and completed a BA and MA in English Literature at the American University of Beirut. While an undergraduate, Mojabber joined Radio Lebanon’s English Service and then taught English at International College. She also taught part-time at AUB in the Civilization Sequence and Education departments in the 80s and 90s.   

Mojabber spent the bulk of the 15 years of the Lebanese War in Beirut, teaching English and working as an educational consultant for the Educational Resource Center of IC. She  helped set up schools and training teachers in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Syria, and Abu Dhabi before being appointed Director of the Elementary School.  She then moved on to head the Middle and Secondary schools of IC and was appointed Senior Vice President of International College in 1998. 

Mojabber  was a member of the cycle coordination committee of the National Educational Reform Project, undertaken by the National Center for Educational Research and Development, Republic of Lebanon. She serves on a number of boards and international committees and has been active in gender awareness training through the activities of the Collective for Research and Training in Development, and its link with the Women’s Learning Partnership. She has also authored a number of articles on the teaching of Arabic, curriculum reform, teacher training, and collaborations between the private and public sector and that have appeared in The Guardian and the Daily Star, as well as presented papers at conferences organized by Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, Columbia Teachers’ College, the Alliance for International Education in Dusseldorf,  the  Lebanese American University, UNESCO Lebanon and UNICEF. She has also edited and co-authored a series of books on the teaching of English. 

Mishka Mojabber Mourani published a poetry collection – LEST WE FORGET: LEBANON 1975-1990 – in 1991 and a short story in HIKAYAT: SHORT STORIES BY LEBANESE WOMEN [Telegram books, UK] in 2006. Read poems from Lest We Forget. 

In the past year she has published  BALCONIES: A MEDITERRANEAN MEMOIR [Dar An-Nahar, Beirut 2009]  and her work has appeared in LEBANON THROUGH WRITERS’ EYES – an anthology published by  Eland, UK in 2009, and, most recently, HABITER BEYROUTH? PARCOURS D’ECRITURE [Assabil, Beirut 2010]. Read excerpts from:

Balconies: a Mediterranean Memoir - Boy With Apple;  February 1987; Nature Morte; To Theia Dora in Greece

Habiter Beyrouth ; And She Who...; When do you belong to a city

All excerpts courtesy of the author.