Wadad Makdisi Cortas
Wadad Makdisi Cortas (1909 - 1979) (in Arabic: وداد مقدسي قرطاس) was a Lebanese-Palestinian educator and memoirist.
Wadad Makdisi grew up in an educated family in Beirut, and attended Ahliah National School for Girls as a child.
Cortas worked at her alma mater, the Ahliah National School for Girls, for forty years, as a teacher and then for 26 years as principal, before she retired in 1972. She also taught at Beirut College for Women, and was on the board of the Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts.
Cortas's memoir, Dunia Ahbab-tuha (A World I Loved) was published in Arabic in the 1960s. She translated the memoir into English and updated it in her retirement; the revised version was published posthumously, with a foreword by Nadine Gordimer, in 2009. In 2012, a stage adaptation of Cortas's book, starring Vanessa Redgrave, was produced first at the Brighton Festival, then at Columbia University, and in 2015 at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.
Wadad Makdisi grew up in an educated family in Beirut, and attended Ahliah National School for Girls as a child.
Cortas worked at her alma mater, the Ahliah National School for Girls, for forty years, as a teacher and then for 26 years as principal, before she retired in 1972. She also taught at Beirut College for Women, and was on the board of the Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts.
Cortas's memoir, Dunia Ahbab-tuha (A World I Loved) was published in Arabic in the 1960s. She translated the memoir into English and updated it in her retirement; the revised version was published posthumously, with a foreword by Nadine Gordimer, in 2009. In 2012, a stage adaptation of Cortas's book, starring Vanessa Redgrave, was produced first at the Brighton Festival, then at Columbia University, and in 2015 at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.
