Ronit Matalon

Ronit Matalon was born in 1959 in Ganei Tikva

Ronit Matalon was born in 1959 in Ganei Tikva to a Jewish family from Egypt. Her father, Felix Matalon, was a social activist for the rights of Mizrahi Jews. Her parents divorced when she was a child.

She studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. She began publishing short stories in the literary quarterly Siman Kria, edited by Menachem Perry.

As a journalist for Haaretz, she covered Gaza and the West Bank from 1987 to 1993. Her first book, the story collection Strangers at Home, appeared in 1992, and her first novel, The One Facing Us, followed in 1995. Her 2008 novel The Sound of Our Steps tells of a fatherless family living in a hut in an immigrant neighborhood.

She taught literature at the University of Haifa and from 2009 headed its creative writing program. She took part in events of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and sat on the board of B'Tselem. In 2003 she joined a petition to the Supreme Court about the killing of Salah Shehade.

Her last novel, And the Bride Closed the Door, was published in 2016 and won the Brenner Prize in 2017. She died on December 28, 2017. A version of a manuscript found after her death was published in 2020 as Snow.