Haifa Zangana

As a painter and writer she participated in the eighties in various European and American publications and group exhibitions, with one-woman shows in London and Iceland. She is also a frequent commentator The Guardian, and a contributor to European and Arabic publications such as Red pepper, Al Ahram weekly and Al Quds (weekly comment), and is a founding member of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Brussel’s Tribunal on Iraq. She was an advisor for the UNDP Report "Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World" (2005) and as a consultant for ESCWA (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) she contributed to the "Arab Integration" report and the "Towards Justice in the Arab world" report which was withdrawn by the UN general secretary.

She left Iraq for political reasons, first moving to Syria where she continued to work for the Palestinian Red Crescent. She relocated to Britain in 1976 and has settled there.

She graduated from Baghdad University and the School of Pharmacy in 1974. After graduating, she was appointed to manage the Red Crescent's nascent pharmaceutical unit in Dummar, near Damascus. This was a challenging role due to lack of funds. The work required continual movement between Syria and Lebanon.

In the early 1970s, as a young activist in the Iraqi Communist Party Haifa was imprisoned by the Baath regime at Abu Ghraib. She was one of a group of female resisters who were imprisoned for distributing leaflets at their university and for attending political meetings. They were captured and tortured and forced to sign confessions, but Zangana managed to escape execution. When she was released from prison, she stayed in Iraq to continue her studies.

In the 1960s, she was part of a protest rally to release the Algerian political prisoner, Jamila Buhrayd. As a young Iraqi growing up in an uncertain environment, she noted that:

Haifa Zangana was born in Baghdad to a Kurdish father from the northern city of Kirkuk and Arabic mother from Karbala. Her family home was always full of relatives from the northern cities. She was seven when the Iraq Revolution of 1958 resulted in the country gaining independence. She was a teenager when the Ba'ath Party assumed power.

Haifa Zangana (born 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq) is an Iraqi novelist, author, artist, and political activist, best known for writing Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London.