Mohamed Shoair
Egypt

Creative and Critical Writings - 2025

Mohamed Shoair is an Egyptian journalist and literary critic who has authored several books on Egypt’s cultural history and written for documentary and television forms. He studied English literature at South Valley University in Qena and currently serves as the managing editor of the Egyptian literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab. He has also served as the editor in chief of Alam al-Kitab magazine and Bab Masr.

Mohamed has published several books on seminal figures in Egypt’s cultural scene, such as Writings Whilst on Guard Duty: The Letters of Abdel Hakim Qasem (2010); The Memoirs of Miss Um Kulthoum (2018); Stones and Medals: Tales from the Archives of Journalism, Culture and Art (2019); and Beginnings and Endings: The Years of Naguib Mahfouz (2021).

Mohamed is also author of The Story of the Banned Book: Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of the Alley (2018), which won the Sawiris Prize for Literary Criticism in 2019. Its English translation, published by the American University in Cairo Press, was longlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. He won the Dubai Press Club’s Journalism Award and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate Award several times and served on the jury for the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.