Youssouf Amine Elalamy

Youssouf Amine Elalamy (, born 20 November 1961 in Larache, Morocco) is a Moroccan writer, visual artist and professor of Media Studies and Communication at Ibn Tofail University. He has published his works mainly in French and occasionally in Moroccan Darija.

Life and career Elalamy attended the French Lycée Descartes in the Moroccan capital Rabat and then studied at New York University in the USA. There he received a Fulbright grant to research the representation of women in Moroccan magazines for his PhD thesis. At the same time, he studied advertising design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design in New York City, graduating in 1991.

After a three-year stay in New York, he returned to Morocco, where he published his first novel Un marocain à New York (A Moroccan in New York) in 1998. For this novel he received the British Council International Award for best travel story and the 2001 Moroccan Prix Grand Atlas. In 2010 his novel Les clandestins (Eng. Stranded) was awarded the "Le Plaisir de Lire" prize. In September 2003 he published Le journal de YAE, a collection of essays inspired by the terrorist attacks of May 16 in Casablanca.

In 2006 he published the collection of short stories Tqarqib Ennab (Gossip) in his native language Darija (Moroccan-Arabic). For this, he also created posters inspired by the tarot cards of Moroccan clairvoyants. In an interview, Elalamy explained that with his rhyming texts he wanted to give literary status to the colloquial language. This work was subsequently performed in several cities in public squares in the tradition of ḥalqa, a traditional form of street theatre, by the Théâtre Nomade. and the Avignon Festival with a production of Stranded.

Works

Paris, mon bled, Eddif, 2002, 176 pages. Miniatures, Hors Champs, 2004, 120 pages. Oussama mon amour, La Croisée des Chemins, 2011, 187 pages. Amour nomade, La Croisée des Chemins, 2013,155 pages. Drôle de Printemps, La Croisée des Chemins, 2015. Même pas mort, Casablanca: Le Fennec, 2018. C'est beau, la guerre, Le Fennec, 2019. J'ai fait un dream, Le Fennec, 2022. Big le Grand, Le Fennec, 2022. Drôles de révolutions, graphic novel, Illustrated by Yassine Hejjamy, Le Fennec, 2023.