Wassyla Tamzali was born in Algeria in 1941. She worked as a lawyer from 1966 to 1977 in the Court of Algiers whilst simultaneously carrying out journalistic, literary and artistic work. She was Editor in Chief at the first North African free weekly newspaper Contact from 1970 to 1973, is the author of a book on North African cinema entitled En attendant Omar Guetlato (1975) that calls for freedom of speech, and a work of art entitled Abzim (1986) that illustrates the finery of Berber women and is a homage to the creativity of women in her country. In 1996, Tamzali was appointed Director of the UNESCO Programme for the Promotion of the Status of Women from the Mediterranean. Since 2006, she has been the Executive Director of the Collectif Maghreb Égalité, of which she is a founding member. Her most recent book, Une éducation algérienne. De la révolution à la revanche des tribus, 2007, and Une femme en colère, Lettre d’Alger aux Européens disabuses, were published in 2009 by éditions Gallimard.