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 the end of the 1940s.
Great uproar, his new novel, has just been published in Hebrew.
Souls, his previous novel (נשמות Keter, 2020), has been translated into Italian (Anime, Giuntina, 2022) and Russian (Души, Phantom Press, 2021).
S&M in the Holy Land, his short story just got published in English.
These days you can watch his plays at the Gesher Theater: In the Tunnel, Someone Like Me, The Odyssey and more.
His new translation of Winnie the Pooh is a great success among readers.
Roy is an autodidact, and as such he is always in a process of learning. He studied languages: English, Russian, French and Italian and translated classic Russian fiction (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekov etc.) and over 40 theatre plays.
Since 2007 he is the in-house dramaturge of Gesher theatre in Tel-Aviv, where his plays, translations and adaptations are produced. Performances based on Chen’s plays are travelling the world with Gesher Theatre (NYC, Moscow, Beijing etc).
Roy Chen is the recipient of many awards including:
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)