Margalit Matitiahu
Margalit Matitiahu (Hebrew: מרגלית מתתיהו, born 1935, in Tel Aviv) is a poet in Ladino and Hebrew from Israel. After the Holocaust, her parents moved to Israel from Thessaloniki, Greece where they were Sephardi Jews who were descendants of Jews from León. She studied Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. She started writing in Hebrew and in 1988 she published "Curtijo Quemado" (later in "Vela de luz") in Ladino, which is a testimony of Nazi destruction. She has worked as a presenter in radio and investigated her mother tongue. She is a member of the World  Academy of Art and Culture (having received a doctorate "Honoris Causa"), of the Israel PEN club and of the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel. She has been awarded several prizes: Giusepina Gerometa from University of Udine wrote her PhD thesis on "The poetry of Margalit Matitiahu" in 2001–2002. This was the first thesis on contemporary modern Sephardic poetry. The second thesis (on translation) was written by Sonja Bertok from University of Trieste in 2003–2004.