Literatureמרים ילן-שטקליס

Miriam Yalan-Shteklis

Miriam Yalan-Shteklis was an Israeli poet and writer of children's books, and in 1956 she became the first winner of the Israel Prize for Children's Literature.

1900 to 1984Hebrew poems for childrenThe poem LevadiTranslating children's literature into Hebrew

Born: 21 September 1900, Kremenchuk
Died: 9 May 1984, Haifa
Occupation: writer, children's writer, poet, librarian
Education: Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums

Miriam Yalan-Shteklis was born in 1900 in Kremenchuk

Miriam Wilensky was born in Potoki, near Kremenchuk in the Russian Empire. Her father, Yehuda Leib Nissan Vilensky, was a Zionist leader, and she later took the name Yalan from his initials. She learned Hebrew as a child and lost her mother at 16.

She went to high school in Minsk and Petrograd and studied psychology and social sciences at the University of Kharkov. She then took Jewish studies in Berlin and library science in Paris.

In 1920 she moved to Mandatory Palestine and settled in Rehavia, Jerusalem. From 1929 she worked at the Jewish National University Library, where she headed the Slavic department for 30 years. She married archaeologist Moshe Stekelis in 1929, and they divorced in 1939.

Her first Hebrew poem appeared in 1922, and from 1933 she wrote poems and stories for children in the weekly Davar Leyeladim. She also translated children's books into Hebrew from Russian, English, German and Dutch. Her work was collected in three volumes between 1957 and 1963.

In 1968 she received the Yakir Yerushalayim award. She died in Haifa on 9 May 1984.