Amira Hess

Amira Hess was born in 1943 in Baghdad

Amira Hess was born on 13 March 1943 in Baghdad, Iraq, as Amira Inchi. She grew up in a well-off family of 7 children. On her mother's side she came from a line of kabbalists and poets.

In 1951 she came to Israel with her family, which first lived in the Yokneam transit camp. The family changed its name to Bar-Haim and later moved to Jerusalem, where she lived for the rest of her life. She finished the Seligsberg high school as a lab technician and took Arabic courses at university.

She served in the IDF Medical Corps and was released after she married Ezra Hess, a dubber born in Germany, in July 1972. She also acted in plays at the Khan Theatre and in community theater.

Her first book, And the Moon is Dripping Madness, appeared in 1984 and won the Luria Prize. Her poems appeared in literary journals, and some were translated into several languages. She also showed her paintings in 2 exhibitions, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Her husband died in 2010. Hess died of cancer in Jerusalem on 1 December 2023 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.