Leïla Marouane

She is also the founder of La Boutique (est. 1996), a creative writing focused organization which promotes French-language writing.

She became a journalist after her college studies were interrupted in Algiers, working for Horizons and El Watan. She later wrote for Politis and Jeune Afrique, as well as the German-language press. In 1995, she attended Paris 8 University to finish her schooling. There she completed a creative writing degree, under the novelist Paul Fournel. Her debut novel, La fille de la Casbah (in English The Daughter of the Kasbah) , was published by Éditions Julliard in 1996. Since, she has published a number of novels. Her first novel translated or published in English was her 1998 Ravisseur, translated into English as "The Abductor".

Leïla Marouane (born in 1960) is a Tunisian-born French Algerian journalist and creative writer.  Leïla Marouane is a pseudonym; her full name is Leyla Zineb Mechentel. She is an author of novels and short fiction which have received a number of awards within the French-language literature community.

Leyla Z. Mechentel was born in 1960 in Djerba, Tunisia, to a family living there in exile. The family moved to Biskra, and they lived there until she was six, when they moved to Algiers. She lived there until her exile from Algeria to Paris in 1991.