Jean Said Makdisi was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Cairo, studied in the USA and UK, and lives in Beirut. She taught English and Humanities at what is now the Lebanese American University, 1972 -1995, where she was active in the musical and theatrical life of the university. She has worked with the women’s movement in Lebanon, and has written widely on Arab women and feminism, literature, and the cinema. She has participated in numerous international and regional conferences, and has been an active member of the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers, (Bahithat) co-editing several books and co-organizing several conferences, including especially Arab Women in the 1920s:  Presence and Identity (2001) and Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective (2009). She is now preparing with Bahithat a big project on Arab Women in Wartime.

She is the author of Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (New York: Persea Books, 1990) a 1990 New York Times Notable Book, which was translated into Arabic as (shatat Beirut,) and Teta, Mother and Me: An Arab Woman’s Memoir (London: Saqi, 2005) Teta, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women (New York: Norton, 2006), which is presently being translated into Arabic.

She organized and edited Serene Husseini Shahid’s book, Jerusalem Memories (Beirut: Naufal, 2000) and participated in the editing of the English translation of Shafik al Hout’s My Life in the PLO (London: Pluto Press,2011)