Edna Shemesh

Edna Shemesh was born in 1953 in Romania

Edna Shemesh, born Erika Lev, was born on May 19, 1953, in Cluj, Romania. She came to Israel as a child with her family. She grew up in Kiryat Gat and finished high school in a literature track there.

She studied English literature and theater history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a diploma in teaching English. She also completed the translation and translation editing program at Tel Aviv University and a radio announcing course of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority.

She wrote magazine articles for Bamakom and Arim, and as a freelance journalist she published in The Jerusalem Post, The Jerusalem Report, Masa Acher and Ynet. Her stories and poems appeared in journals in Israel and abroad, and she writes book reviews for Haaretz and Iton 77. She also translates prose and academic texts.

Her stories won prizes from Noga and Iton 77 magazines, and she received the MacDowell Fellowship in 2017. She taught English at Givat Brenner high school and at Peres College. She is married to Professor Aldo Shemesh of the Weizmann Institute of Science, has three children and lives in Rehovot.