Corinna Hasofferett's Biography

In her forty years of literary activity, writer Corinna has published seven books, three of them through commercial publishing houses and the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel. In 2002 she formed an independent publishing enterprise answering to the appellation HudnaPress (hida – Hebrew for riddle, and who knows when hudna -ceasefire in Arabic - will finally find its way here) to ensure herself of freedom of thought and artistic expression.
In 1975 she initiated an encounter of artists (among others, A.B. Yehoshua, Anton Shamas and Aharon Meged) with Jewish and Arab youth in the Galilee. In 1984 she fulfilled her social vision by initiating and founding Hilai Association – Israeli Center for Creative Arts, which she directed for eleven years. In this project she renovated apartments in the towns of Mitzpe Ramon and Ma'a lot and brought hundreds of artists and writers from the world over for an enriching encounter with the local population, as well as writers and artists-in-residence.

Corinna was born in Romania in the mid-1930s. During the Second World War her family home was confiscated and the family was "permitted" to inhabit a mildewed cubicle in the yard. In December 1947 the family reached Israel as illegal immigrants, and after six months of incarceration in Cyprus, settled in Giv'at Aliya, Jaffa. It took Corinna two years to master Hebrew and that has been her writing language ever since, although the Romanian language and European culture are present as undercurrents in her writing.

In the early1950s, still in her teens, she worked for three years with the famous poet and editor Abraham Shlonsky at the then leading Sifriyat Hapoalim Publishing House. She was a member of the youth group that joined Kibbutz Carmiah in 1956. In the 1960s she studied Hebrew and English Literature at Tel Aviv University.

Corina Hasofferett is her official name in the public registry. Corinna is her birth name. In Israel it was first Hebraized as Rina, a name now dropped, as she began writing and returned to her true self. She signs her books with her proper name only, for she feels that women's family names are never their own but rather their fathers' and husbands'. She added Hasofferett (Hebrew for 'the woman-writer') after a respectable newspaper refused to publish an article she wrote, and the radio cancelled her participation in a program because she introduced herself with no family name.