May Menassa (Arabic: مي منسى‎; 20 July 1939 – 19 January 2019) was a Lebanese journalist, writer, editor-in-chief, critic and translator, best known as the author of Walking in the Dust and I Killed My Mother in Order to Live.

She was the host of the talk show called "Women of Today" (nisa' alyawm / نساء اليوم) that aired on [Télé Liban].

[9] In 1998 she publishes her first novel in Arabic: "Awraq min dafater chajarat rumman" (أوراق من دفاتر شجرة رمان، رواية، دار النهار) that talks about a past family tragedy: her brother's sickness.

This same tragedy was brought up by Vénus Khoury-Ghata (at that time living in Paris, France) in French in the Novel: "Une maison au bord des larmes".

Since then, she published 10 novels and simultaneously wrote kids' stories, such as her first book that was in French "Le jardin de Sarah".

In an interview with journalist Nadia Nouaihed, she declared that her favorite writers and poets were Jean Racine, Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Hugo, Molière and many other in French literature.

As for Arabic literature, she reads books from Naguib Mahfouz, Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, Tawfiq Yusuf 'Awwad and other more modern writers.

She always felt honored and privileged working with both poets, Unsi Al Hajj and Shawqi Abu Shakra, at An-Nahar.

She was nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction twice for her novels Walking in the Dust and I Killed My Mother in Order to Live respectively in 2008 and 2019.

[15] Writing was a big part of her life, her legacy and works will always be remembered due to the multiple books and articles that she wrote.