Editorial Board
Our Editorial Committee
At Agafay Books, every manuscript is read by people who have spent their lives in service of literature, education, and the arts.
Our editorial committee brings together three individuals with distinct backgrounds: literary education, pedagogy, and cultural creation. They are united by a single conviction: that Moroccan readers, at every age, deserve books that are literarily worthy, culturally honest, and genuinely meaningful.
For us, publishing is not a commercial act. It is a responsibility.
Khadija EL HANAI
Khadija was born in Marrakech. After a Bachelor's degree in Literature (Licence ès Lettres) at Cadi Ayyad University, she began doctoral studies at the University of Caen in France, specialising in "Theory and Teaching of Literature". Her long career as a teacher of French in both the public and private sectors gave her solid expertise as an educator, facilitator and author.
Alongside her teaching duties, she directed theatre workshops with, and for, young people. Her stage productions, educational films and performances earned her several awards, notably for a dramatic adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe and a film adaptation of Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Oscar et la dame rose. She has also adapted several of her own dramatic texts for the stage.
Equally at ease in Arabic and French, Khadija, who is also a mother, has always lived in close contact with Moroccan children and teenagers. She knows their needs, their questions and the way they react, which gives her stories their authenticity.
She was also involved in activities linked to the environment and ecology, including taking part in clubs for "journalism in the service of the environment", as well as gardening activities: tree planting, land clearing, sowing seeds...
Today, she mainly writes stories centred on nature and the socio-cultural world that goes with it, which she offers to the Bab El-Nouar collection of Agafay Books. The Legend of the Far North, co-written with Fatima Zahra Mokhtari, is her first book. It tells of a long journey of exploration by a bird, setting out from the plains of southwestern Morocco and heading for the North Pole.
Khadija writes from her desk at home, surrounded by her cat and her plants. Her dearest wish is simple: to see more green spaces in our Moroccan cities.
Nathalie BONFILS
Twelve years ago, Nathalie left the mountains of Chamonix for the countryside of Marrakech. She now lives not far from the Agafay Desert, surrounded by animals. She spends time simply watching them, how they move and how they behave with one another, and that is where her stories begin. On Fridays, she goes to the souk. Nature is never far from her pages. Neither are the fairies and Jinn of Moroccan tales.
Before that, she was born and raised in Paris, but it was the mountains that called her next. She settled in the Haute-Savoie, near Chamonix, and soon felt at home in mountain life. There she created a mobile pottery and modelling workshop and travelled from place to place with her clay, bringing creativity to schools and retirement homes. She also wrote as a press correspondent for Le Dauphiné Libéré and joined in the cultural life of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, including the Mont-Blanc International Humor Festival.
Twenty years ago, Nathalie wrote a story and tucked it into a drawer. It stayed there, patient and quiet, until she heard about Agafay Books. She was the first to offer it. Today, A Journey to the End of the Dream (Un voyage au bout du rêve) is finally out in the world, in Arabic, French (the original) and English, so that children in many places can follow it.
Nathalie is also a grandmother, and her grandchildren are very happy to read her stories. They are her first and happiest readers, and perhaps the best proof that a story kept in a drawer is worth sharing.
Nathalie still writes in the Moroccan countryside, for children and for adults, and she works as an energy therapist. Her drawer is a little emptier now, and there are more stories on the way.
Abdelali LAKHDAR
Born in Casablanca, Abdelali Lakhdar studied Mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Rabat and Financial Mathematics at the Dresden University of Technology, then taught mathematics at secondary and higher levels in both Morocco and Germany. Moving between these two educational cultures gave him a rare comparative eye for pedagogy, curriculum design, and the role cultural context plays in how children receive and interpret stories. As a father himself, he takes real pleasure in writing for children, and he brings this dual sensibility, Moroccan and German, analytical and culturally attuned, to every manuscript, always asking whether a book speaks meaningfully to children from different backgrounds and traditions.
Khadija EL HANAI
Khadija was born in Marrakech. After a Bachelor's degree in Literature (Licence ès Lettres) at Cadi Ayyad University, she began doctoral studies at the University of Caen in France, specialising in "Theory and Teaching of Literature". Her long career as a teacher of French in both the public and private sectors gave her solid expertise as an educator, facilitator and author.
Alongside her teaching duties, she directed theatre workshops with, and for, young people. Her stage productions, educational films and performances earned her several awards, notably for a dramatic adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe and a film adaptation of Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Oscar et la dame rose. She has also adapted several of her own dramatic texts for the stage.
Equally at ease in Arabic and French, Khadija, who is also a mother, has always lived in close contact with Moroccan children and teenagers. She knows their needs, their questions and the way they react, which gives her stories their authenticity.
She was also involved in activities linked to the environment and ecology, including taking part in clubs for "journalism in the service of the environment", as well as gardening activities: tree planting, land clearing, sowing seeds...
Today, she mainly writes stories centred on nature and the socio-cultural world that goes with it, which she offers to the Bab El-Nouar collection of Agafay Books. The Legend of the Far North, co-written with Fatima Zahra Mokhtari, is her first book. It tells of a long journey of exploration by a bird, setting out from the plains of southwestern Morocco and heading for the North Pole.
Khadija writes from her desk at home, surrounded by her cat and her plants. Her dearest wish is simple: to see more green spaces in our Moroccan cities.
Nathalie BONFILS
Twelve years ago, Nathalie left the mountains of Chamonix for the countryside of Marrakech. She now lives not far from the Agafay Desert, surrounded by animals. She spends time simply watching them, how they move and how they behave with one another, and that is where her stories begin. On Fridays, she goes to the souk. Nature is never far from her pages. Neither are the fairies and Jinn of Moroccan tales.
Before that, she was born and raised in Paris, but it was the mountains that called her next. She settled in the Haute-Savoie, near Chamonix, and soon felt at home in mountain life. There she created a mobile pottery and modelling workshop and travelled from place to place with her clay, bringing creativity to schools and retirement homes. She also wrote as a press correspondent for Le Dauphiné Libéré and joined in the cultural life of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, including the Mont-Blanc International Humor Festival.
Twenty years ago, Nathalie wrote a story and tucked it into a drawer. It stayed there, patient and quiet, until she heard about Agafay Books. She was the first to offer it. Today, A Journey to the End of the Dream (Un voyage au bout du rêve) is finally out in the world, in Arabic, French (the original) and English, so that children in many places can follow it.
Nathalie is also a grandmother, and her grandchildren are very happy to read her stories. They are her first and happiest readers, and perhaps the best proof that a story kept in a drawer is worth sharing.
Nathalie still writes in the Moroccan countryside, for children and for adults, and she works as an energy therapist. Her drawer is a little emptier now, and there are more stories on the way.
Abdelali LAKHDAR
Born in Casablanca, Abdelali Lakhdar studied Mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Rabat and Financial Mathematics at the Dresden University of Technology, then taught mathematics at secondary and higher levels in both Morocco and Germany. Moving between these two educational cultures gave him a rare comparative eye for pedagogy, curriculum design, and the role cultural context plays in how children receive and interpret stories. As a father himself, he takes real pleasure in writing for children, and he brings this dual sensibility, Moroccan and German, analytical and culturally attuned, to every manuscript, always asking whether a book speaks meaningfully to children from different backgrounds and traditions.
