Esther Dagan Biography

Born in Jerusalem, Esther A. Dagan immigrated to Canada in 1978. She graduated from Scola Cantorum Dance Academy in Paris and later received her BA and MA in Theatre and Drama from the Tel Aviv University, where she also taught the History of African Arts for ten years. Between 1962 and 1978, over 100 of her articles, stories and essays were published in various newspapers and magazines in Israel. In Canada, besides teaching at Concordia University and invited as a guest lecturer to many institutions, she authored ten books and edited three books on the African Arts, all of which have been listed at Amazon.com. In the late 90's, Mrs. Dagan has shifted her writing to fictional short stories, plays, screenplays and poems.

Besides 13 published books on the African Arts, of which most are out of print, Mrs. Dagan's short stories collections, 'Mask' was published in 2002 and 'Jerusalem, Snapshots from a Distance' was published in 2003. Her two-act play, 'In Search of Characters' was published in 2004. Her short story, 'Terra-Gay', won the first prize in a contest by the Canadian Authors Association in 2001. Her story, 'Beckett? Qui-Est-Ce? ', was published in (Ex) Cite, Journal of Contemporary Writing 2001. Recently, one of her poems, 'The Invisible Shrine', was published in The Canadian Jewish News. In her drawers, hundreds of poems are waiting to be published and 'Three Mothers' is the first to be published here.