Kosmopolis 23
Chadia Arab, Hicham Houdaifa, Yasmina Naji, Kenza Sefrioui, and Mireia Estrada
Paving the Way for Freedom
Journalist, literary critic, publisher, and founder of En toutes lettres, a publishing house specialising in the social sciences.
© Image courtesy of Le Cube
Kenza Sefrioui (Paris, 1979) has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne IV University, with a thesis titled La Revue Souffles (1966 1973): Espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc (Souffles Magazine: Hopes for a Cultural Revolution in Morocco, Éditions du Sirocco, winner of the Gran Atlas Prize in 2013). She is presently working as a cultural journalist, literary critic, and publisher. From 2005 to 2010, she wrote the literary column of the Journal hebdomadaire. She has worked with the magazine Tel Quel and was co-director of the project Casablanca œuvre ouverte (Casablanca Open Work, Le Fennec, 2013), a jointly authored volume on contemporary writing in Casablanca.
With Hicham Houdaifa, she is also co-founder of the publishing house En toutes lettres. Sefrioui is a very dynamic cultural activist and also author of a thoroughgoing study of publishing in Morocco, titled Le Livre à l’épreuve, les failles de la chaîne au Maroc (The Book Tested: Weak Links in the Chain in Morocco, En toutes lettres, 2017). In 2018, she published Casablanca, nuit d’artistes (Casablanca, Night of Artists) which is co-authored with Leïla Slimani (Malika Éditions).
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Kosmopolis 23
Paving the Way for Freedom