Joumana Haddad

Joumana Haddad (; Salloum; born December 6, 1970, in Beirut) is a Lebanese author, public speaker, journalist and human rights activist. She has been selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women by Arabian Business Magazine for her cultural and social activism. In 2021, she was on Apolitical's list of 100 most influential people in Gender Policy. She is founder of Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language magazine specialized in the arts and literature of the body (2009–2011). Haddad launched a new TV show in November 2018 on Alhurra highlighting the topics of free expression and critical thinking. In September 2019, she founded a youth centered NGO in Beirut called the Joumana Haddad Freedoms Center. In February 2020, in partnership with the Institut Français in Lebanon, she launched the first International Feminisms Festival in the Middle East with a group of local and international co-organizers.

Career

Joumana Haddad started working at An-Nahar newspaper in 1997, serving as the cultural editor 2005-2017.

In the course of her career as a cultural journalist she has interviewed many international authors, such as Umberto Eco, Paul Auster, Jose Saramago, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek and others.

Between 2007 and 2011, she was the administrator of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

In 2009, she founded her magazine, Jasad, specialized in the culture and politics of the body in the Arab world.

Between 2012 and 2016, she taught creative writing and Arabic modern poetry at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.

In 2018 she started hosting a new TV show on Alhurra highlighting the topics of free expression and critical thinking.

In November 2009, she won the International Prize North South for poetry, of the Pescarabruzzo Foundation in Italy. The winner of the novel prize was Austrian writer Peter Handke.

In February 2010, she won the Blue Metropolis Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize.

In August 2010, she received the Rodolfo Gentili Prize in Porto Recanati, Italy.

In November 2012, she received the Cutuli Prize for journalism in Catania, Italy.

In July 2013, she was appointed honorary ambassador for culture and human rights for the city of Naples in the Mediterranean by the mayor of Naples Luigi de Magistris.

In February 2014, she was awarded the "Career Poetry Prize" by the Archicultura Foundation in Acqui Terme, Italy.

In December 2018, Haddad won the Social Economic Award for the category of Social Media Influencer.

Other ventures

Haddad's magazine Jasad was the feature of a 2013 film by Amanda Homsi-Ottosson, Jasad & The Queen of Contradictions, a Women Make Movies release.

In 2009, Haddad herself co-wrote and acted in a movie by Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab ("What's going on?").

Haddad ran for the Lebanese parliamentary elections on May 6, 2018. After she was announced a winner on the night of the elections by local TV news channels, the authorities declared that she had actually lost on the morning of the following day, so there was a big demonstration in front of the Ministry of Interior on the afternoon of May 7 to protest the results and ask for a recount. Haddad went on to submit an appeal to the Constitutional Council on June 7 with the prominent lawyer Melhem Khalaf, but her case was supported by only three out of the ten members of the Council, so her appeal for a recount was revoked.

Haddad was the first woman to edit the cultural pages of An-Nahar and to publish a magazine that discusses controversial and taboo topics in the middle east such as virginity, polygamy, violence against women and the LGBTQ community, in Arabic and in a conservative society. She was also the first Arab woman to be openly atheist. She received a lot of hate, rape and death threats.