Literatureיעל לוטן

Yael Lotan

Yael Lotan was an Israeli writer, journalist, editor and translator, and a peace and human rights activist.

1935 to 2009Editing Ariel and New OutlookHebrew and English literary translationThe 1986 meeting with PLO membersCampaign to free Mordechai Vanunu

Born: 11 September 1935, Tel Aviv
Died: 2 November 2009, Givatayim
Occupation: translator, journalist, newspaper editor, writer
Education: University of Cambridge

Yael Lotan was born in 1935 in Tel Aviv

Lotan was born in Tel Aviv in 1935. Her father, Binyamin Eliav, was a journalist and diplomat. In 1953 she went with her parents to Argentina on a Foreign Ministry mission.

She went to study in London, where she married engineer Maurice Stoppi, and in 1958 they moved to Jamaica. In 1960 she published her first novel, The Other Eye, in English. In 1965 she moved to the United States and married writer Loyle Hairston.

In 1970 she returned to Israel with her two children and edited Ariel, the Foreign Ministry quarterly. Her contract was not renewed at the end of 1979, and she then edited New Outlook. In the 1980s she edited literary pages at Al HaMishmar and Koteret Rashit.

In 1986 she met PLO members in Romania and was later tried under the law banning such contact. A magistrate's court sentenced her to prison, but the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to a fine. She later worked to help Mordechai Vanunu and interviewed him in 2004.

She translated fiction and nonfiction between Hebrew and English. She died of liver cancer in 2009.