Miri Ben-Simhon

Miri Ben-Simhon was born in Marseille to Moroccan parents en route to Israel. She grew up and lived in Jerusalem throughout her life, studying Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem  after completing her mandatory military service. During her life, Ben-Simhon authored four books of poetry, including Anxious Existentialism (אקזיסטנציאליזם חרד), published posthumously in 1998. In 2018, her books and several unpublished poems were published together as רק האויר בחוץ שגיא, which approximately translates to Only the Air Outside. 

Little of her work is available in English. In 2020, Toad Press released The Absolute Reader, which contains selections of Ben-Simhon’s work translated into English by Lisa Katz. 

Ben-Simhon’s work was critically reviewed by Israeli newspapers throughout her career, and her poetry remains popular in Israel long after her 1996 death from injuries sustained in a car crash. The literary critic Yitzhak Laor once noted about Ben-Simhon’s work and perspective, “in the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s, it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim … but as one.”