Maya Arad (born January 25, 1971) is an American-based

Israeli Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli ...

writer. She is generally considered the "foremost Hebrew writer outside Israel".

Biography

Maya Arad was born in

Rishon LeZion Rishon LeZion ( he, רִאשׁוֹן לְצִיּוֹן , ''lit.'' First to Zion, Arabic: راشون لتسيون) is a city in Israel, located along the central Israeli coastal plain south of Tel Aviv. It is part of the Gush Dan metropolitan ar ...

in Israel in 1971 and grew up in a

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

, Nahal-Oz. At age 11 she returned to her city of birth. Like most Israelis, she served in the Israeli Defense Forces, namely in the Education Corps, where she met her future husband, Reviel Netz, a poet and noted Israeli scholar of the history of pre-modern mathematics, who is currently a professor of Classics and of Philosophy at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. The couple has two daughters. Arad earned a B.A. in

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and Linguistics from Tel-Aviv University and a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of London. She taught at Harvard University, the University of Geneva in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, and in the theater department at

. She is a writer-in-residence at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford.

Books

Her first novel, ''Another Place, a Foreign City'' (Xargol, 2003), written in verse on the model of Eugene Onegin, became a best-seller in Israel and was adapted as a musical play by the Cameri Theater. In 2005, she published an academic book, ''Roots and Patterns: Hebrew Morpho-Syntax,'' a study of the regularity of the Hebrew verb system. The same year she published ''The Righteous Forsaken'', a play in verse, a reimagining of Griboedov’s " Woe from Wit." Her novel ''Seven Moral Failings'' (Xargol, 2006) was another best-seller. ''Family Pictures'' (Xargol, 2008) comprises three novellas. ''Positions of Stress: Essays on Israeli Literature between Sound and History'' (Ahuzat Bayit, 2008) was written together with Reviel Netz. Her recent publications are also with Xargol: five novels – ''Short Story Master'' (2009), ''Suspected Dementia'' (2011), ''The Maiden of Kazan'' (2015),,''Behind the Mountain'' (2016), and ''All about Abigail'' (2021), as well as a collection of novellas ''The Hebrew Teacher'' (2018). The namesake novella of this book was translated into English.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arad, Maya 1971 births Living people Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students alumni Israeli women novelists Israeli women poets Israeli poets Israeli novelists