photo: Ernest Aranov
Roy Chen is a writer, playwright and translator.
Born in 1980 in Tel-Aviv, Israel, where he lives with his wife and son.
His father’s side of the family came to "The Holy Land" after the expulsion from Spain, about 520 years ago. His mother’s parents came from Morocco in 1949.
Great uproar, his last novel was hailed as prophetic due to the last chapter where a war is predicted to break out. The novel has just been published in translation into Italian and Russian..
Souls, his successful previous novel, has been translated into Italian (Anime, Giuntina, 2022), Russian (Души, Phantom Press, 2021), Ukrainian (Душі, Dukh i Litera, 2025). Recently, the novel was also translated into English..
Latest News: Chi Come Me in Franco Parenti Theater in Milan, Italy, also published as a book in Giuntina publishing house. State of Affairs in Thalia Theater, Hamburg, Germany. The Dybbuk in Arlekin Players Theater, Boston, USA, and Souls based on his best-seller novel in Gesher Theater, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Since 2017 Roy is the in-house playwright of Gesher Theater in Tel-Aviv where his plays, translations and adaptations are produced.
His plays Floating Island, In the Tunnel, Anybody Here, The Odyssey and others are running for years and presented on international tours (NYC, Toronto, Milan, Saint-Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Budapest, Beijing etc).
Roy is an autodidact, and as such he is always in a process of learning.
He studied languages: English, Russian, French and Italian. He translated classic Russian fiction (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekov etc.) and over 50 theatre plays.
Roy Chen is the recipient of many awards including:
S.Y. Agnon Prize for Literature (2023)
Rosenblum Performing Arts Award by the city of Tel Aviv (2022)
The Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works (2022)
Yitzhak Navon Ministry of Culture and Sports Award for the Preservation and Cultivation of Israeli Cultures. (2017)