Ghada Abdel Aal

Ghada Abdel Aal ( born 1978 in El Mahalla El Kubra, Egypt) is an Egyptian author and screenwriter, best known for her satirical blog and book Wanna be a bride (; ). She is a winner of the 2012 Bauer Prize at the Venice International Literary Festival, and the Golden Pyramid award at the Cairo Arabic Media Festival.

Life and career Ghada Abdel Aal was born on 21 December 1978 in El Mahalla El Kubra, Egypt. Her mother was a public relations worker, while her father was an engineer. She studied pharmacy at college.

Abdel Aal started on a career as a pharmacist at a hospital pharmacy in her hometown. In 2006, encountering a variety of marriage proposals, she began a blog Wanna be a bride/I Wanna Get Married, satirising the experiences of Egyptian women whom society expects only to marry and have children. As the blog became popular, she was approached by a publishing house, Dar El Shorouk, to convert her writings to a book. The eponymous book, written in a colloquial Arabic, was published in 2008 and became a bestseller in the Arab world. The book was translated to English by Nora Eltahawy in 2010.

An alumna of the International Writing Program's Fall Residency (2010), she wrote a screenplay for a political comedy The Night They Arrested Egypt. She writes a humorous column for the newspaper Al-Shorouk.