Nora Houri-Haim was born in 1953 in the ​“new, old” city of Tel Aviv, to par­ents who’d made aliyah from Iraq. She spent her child­hood sur­round­ed by her huge extend­ed fam­i­ly and grew up on the knees of her aunts and uncles, lis­ten­ing to sto­ries from the ​“old coun­try.” These sto­ries were in sharp con­trast to the real­i­ty around Nora. In the fledg­ling state of Israel, any­thing for­eign, and espe­cial­ly any­thing con­nect­ed to the Arab world, was frowned upon. This dis­so­nance defined Nora’s child­hood and inspired her writ­ing as an adult. She fin­ished her school­ing in Tel Aviv, and then served in the Israeli mil­i­tary as an edu­ca­tion­al advis­er. After com­plet­ing her BA, Nora got mar­ried, had four kids and spent eight years teach­ing 6 – 8th graders. Nora com­plet­ed her MA, with hon­ors in Lit­er­a­ture and Cre­ative Writ­ing from Ben Guri­on Uni­ver­si­ty in the Negev. While there, she began writ­ing her first nov­el, Cov­er Me with my Izar”. The nov­el was nom­i­nat­ed by her pub­lish­er for the Sapir Prize for debut nov­els and was praised by the Nation­al Library dur­ing the year it was published.