Hanan Al-Shaykh was born in 1945 in Beirut, Lebanon. She grew up in a conservative part of town called Ras al-naba where she went to a traditional Muslim primary school for girls. Al-Shaykh began writing at a young age and by sixteen had essays published in the newspaper she would eventually work for, al-Nahar. She attended the Ameri-can College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt from 1963 to 1966. After her graduation she worked in television in Beirut and as a journalist for a women’s magazine, Al-Hasna, before landing a job at al-Nahar in 1968. She worked at the newspaper until 1975.