Cécile Oumhani (English translation)

Modèle:Infobox person/Wikidatawas born on December 12th 1952 in Namur, Belgium. She is a novelist, a poet and an essayist. She is also a teacher.

Biography

She grew up between her father's French and her mother's English. She is the daughter of the Scottish artist, Madeleine Vigné-Philip. "The time she spent as a child in her mother's family in anglophone Canada had a great influence on her, enabling her to feel at ease in various places: Belgium, India, Germany, Scotland." She developed her own relationship with words through reading francophone and anglophone literature in the original. This enabled her to take an interest in what can be glimpsed in the in-between of two different languages. Her encounter with Tunisia almost came naturally, adding new perspectives to her imagination.

In 1995, she published her first book of poems, À l'abside des hêtres, as well as her first book of short stories Fibules sur fond de pourpre. These were followed by about ten books of poems. In 1999, Une odeur de henné, her first novel, was published. Her style is refined. In 2008, Le café d'Yllka was awarded the 2009 literary Prize of the Association des écrivains de langue française. She received the 2012 Naji Naaman Prize in Lebanon.

Cécile Oumhani is also present in numerous literary festivals, such as the Marché de la Poésie in Paris, Étonnants Voyageurs, the Salon international de l'édition et du livre in Rabat, Nature en Livres. She was a senior lecturer at the University Paris-est-Créteil-Val-de-Marne for many years.

"An impassioned writer" (see her essay À fleur de mots : la passion de l'écriture, published in Montpellier in 2004), Cécile Oumhani creates engaging characters, born of mixed marriages, who are in search of their childhood on either shore of the Mediterranean..."

In 2024, she publishes a first book of short stories written in English at Red River in Delhi: "In the intimate, luminous stories of her first collection in her mother tongue English, Francophone poet and novelist Cecile Oumhani moves between North Africa, Canada and France, but her gaze is on the small moments and fleeting incidents that illuminate the lives of her protagonists.", says Aamer Hussein.

Works

  • 1995: À l'abside des hêtres, poems, Centre Froissart
  • 1995: Fibules sur fond de pourpre, short stories, Le Bruit des Autres
  • 1996: Loin de l'envol de la palombe, poems, La Bartavelle
  • 1997: Vers Lisbonne, promenade déclive, poems, Encres Vives
  • 1998: Des sentiers pour l'absence, poems, Le Bruit des Autres
  • 1999: Une odeur de henné, novel, Paris-Méditerranée / Alif
  • 2001: Les racines du mandarinier, novel, Paris-Méditerranée
  • 2003: Chant d'herbe vive, poems, Voix d'encre (with engravings by Liliane-Ève Brendel
  • 2004: À fleur de mots, essay Chèvre-Feuille Étoilée
  • 2005: Demeures de mots et de nuit, poems, Voix d'encre (with engravings by Myoung-Nam Kim)
  • 2007: Plus loin que la nuit, novel, L'Aube
  • 2008: Le café d'Yllka, novel, Élyzad, Prix littéraire européen de l'ADELF 2009
  • 2008: Au miroir de nos pas, poems, Encres Vives
  • 2009: Jeune femme à la terrasse, poem, (English and French version), Al Manar, (with paintings by Julius Baltazar)
  • 2009: Temps solaire, poems, Voix d'encre, (with engravings by Myoung-Nam Kim)
  • 2011: Plus loin que la nuit, novel, new paperback edition, Chèvre-Feuille Étoilée
  • 2012: Une odeur de henné, novel, new paperback edition, Élyzad, Prix Grain de Sel 2013
  • 2012: L'atelier des Strésor, novel, Élyzad, Mention spéciale du Prix franco-indien Gitanjali 2012, Prix de la Bastide 2013
  • 2013: La nudité des pierres, poems, Al Manar
  • 2013: Tunisie, carnets d'incertitude, journal poétique, Elyzad, Sélection Grand Prix de poésie de la SGDL 2014
  • Prix européen Virgile 2014 (for her works as a whole)
  • 2015: Passeurs de rives, poems, La tête à l'envers (with inks by Myoung-Nam Kim)
  • 2016: Les racines du mandarinier, novel, new paperback edition, Élyzad
  • 2016: Tunisian Yankee, novel, Prix ADELF-Maghreb 2016, Nominated for the Prix Joseph Kessel 2017
  • 2018: Marcher loin sous les nuages, poems, APIC editions, Algiers (collection Poèmes du monde)
  • 2019: Mémoires inconnues, poems, La tête à l'envers (with inks by Liliane Ève-Brendel, Finalist of the Prix Mallarmé 2019
  • 2022: La ronde des nuages, poems, La tête à l'envers (with five reproductions of works by J.M.W. Turner
  • 2024: Ma mère et la peinture, Meine Mutter und die Malerei, essay, with paintings by Madeleine Vigné-Philip, author's mother, in French and in German, translation by Tanja Langer, Bübül Verlag Berlin
  • 2024: Les tigres ne mangent pas les étoiles, novel, Élyzad
  • 2024: Like Birds in the Sky, short stories originally written in English, Red River, Delhi
  1. Sabiha Bouguerra, "Oumhani, Cécile (Namur, Belgique 1952)" in Béatrice Didier, Antoinette Fouque et Mireille Calle-Gruber (dir.), Dictionnaire universel des créatrices, Éditions des femmes, 2013, p.3302-3303.
  2. Yasmine Chouaki, "Cécile Oumhani (archive)" on Radio France internationale, January 29th 2010
  3. "Oumhani Cécile (archive)" on Étonnants Voyageurs.
  4. Karin Schwerdtner, "Cécile Oumhani : se confronter au monde (à travers l'écriture)", Voix Plurielles, avril 2014, p. 313-322
  5. Tahar Bekri, "Le poème du dimanche : 'Le temps d'une prairie' de Cécile Oumhani, sur Kapitalis, October 23rd 2023
  6. "Cécile Oumhani (archives) on Maison de l'écrivain et de la littérature
  7. "Plus loin que la nuit, de Cécile Oumhani", sur Le Nouvel Obs, January 8th 2008
  8. Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux,"Tunisian Yankee ou l'itinéraire fracassé d'un migrant du XXe siècle, sur Le Monde, April 2th 2017