Chantal Chawaf

After studying art and literature at l'École du Louvre, she married and lived in Damascus for seven years where she had two children.

In 1974, she published, her first book, with Editions des Femmes,[1] the feminist press created by activists in the MLF (Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes) centered around French feminist Antoinette Fouque.

Chawaf’s first book, Retable, la rêverie, started what critics called "Écriture féminine", along with the works of Hélène Cixous, Catherine Clément, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray.

In her books, Chawaf explores the mother-daughter relationship and attempts to realize the potential of words to free the female unconscious, to de-intellectualize the body and to give voice to an inner experience.

[3][4] Chantal Chawaf's work on birth and life-giving leads, in her last decade books, to an eco-critique of contemporary society (Melusine des détritus).