Bio

Salem Zenia was born in Kabylia in 1962. He is a Berber (amazigh) writer, poet and novelist. He studied journalism in the Universalis Institute of Liège (Belgium). He has worked as a journalist for several publications and participated in several amazigh claiming movements. In 1998 he founded his own newspaper Racines/Izuran, a French/Berber bilingual oriented towards the promotion of the Berber culture and literature. He has published the poetry collections Les rêves de Yidir/Tirga n Yidir (The Dreams of Yidir, 1993) and Printemps/Tifeswin (springs, 2004), both in French/Berber bilingual editions and the novels Tafrara (Aurora, 1995) and Iɣil d wefru (Power and Sword, 2003), all published in Paris by the publisher Harmattan.

Defender of the rights of the Berber people and victim of linguistic and religious persecution, Salem Zenia currently resides in Barcelona, welcomed by the Catalan PEN within the Guest Writer Program.

Project

Currently I am working on a realistic novel which deals with political and social situation after the Algerian civil war. It’s not easy to deal with such a subject with fiction while this kind of work is usually reserved to historians and archivists. But some facts are so topical that it is difficult to talk without open wounds. This is a novel that does not stop to grow, but not on the leaves but in my head. It is this situation between writing and nightmare that drives me to the isolation … maybe the time I will spend at the Residence Faber will help me to do this click, I meen stop live my novel and put me to write it even if it is still a nightmare.