Ḥasan, Rūzā Yāsīn

Rosa Yaseen Hassan (Arabic: روزا ياسين حسن) is a Syrian novelist and writer. She was born in Damascus in 1974 and studied architecture at university. Upon graduation in 1998, she worked as a journalist, writing for various Syrian and Arabic periodicals. Her first published book was a collection of short stories, published in 2000 under the title A Sky Tainted with Light. She has also written a number of novels, starting with Ebony (2004) which won the Hanna Mina Prize. Her third novel Hurras al-Hawa (Guardians of the Air, 2009) was longlisted for the Arabic Booker Prize. In 2009, Hassan was chosen as one of the Beirut39, a group of 39 Arab writers under the age of 40 chosen through a contest organised by Banipal magazine and the Hay Festival.