Suad Amiry

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Suad Amiry (Arabic: سعاد العامري) (born 1951) is an author and architect living in the West Bank town of Ramallah. She studied architecture at the American University of Beirut, Michigan, U.S. and in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her parents went from Palestine to Amman, Jordan. She was brought up there and went to Lebanon's capital of Beirut to study architecture. When she returned to Ramallah as a tourist in 1981, she met Salim Tamari, whom she married later, and stayed.

Her book "Sharon and My Mother-in-Law" has been translated into 11 languages, was a bestseller in France, and was awarded in 2004 the prestigious Viareggio Prize in Italy together with Italo-Israeli Manuela Dviri, a journalist, playwright and writer whose son was killed by a Hezbollah rocket.

From 1991 to 1993 Amiry was a member of a Palestinian peace delegation in Washington D.C. She is engaged in some major peace initiatives of Palestinian and Israeli women.

She is Director of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation which was founded with help from Sida, the Swedish Agency for International Development Cooperation, and the Ford Foundation.

Amiry was a member of staff at Birzeit University until 1991,[1] since then she has worked for Riwaq where she is the director[2]. She was appointed as a vice-chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Birzeit University [3] in 2006.