Emily Nasrallah, maiden name "Abi Rashed" was born July 6, 1931 in Kfeir village, South Lebanon. She passed away on March 13, 2018, in her home in Beirut. Emily started her formal education in the elementary public school of Kfeir. With the support of her uncle she moved from Kfeir to complete her secondary education in Shoueifat National College, near Beirut, and went on to university at the Beirut University College (now the Lebanese American University) and on to the American University of Beirut where she received her B.A. Degree in Education in 1958. In 1957, She married Philip Nasrallah, chemist from Zahle, Lebanon, and they raised a family of 4 children: Ramzi, Maha, Khalil, and Mona. Novelist, journalist, freelance writer, teacher, lecturer, women's rights activist, are some of the activities she has successfully engaged in. She started her journalistic and writing career while still at college level. Her first novel, Birds of September, was published in 1962, and won her, three Arabic literary prizes. This novel was in its sixteenth edition in 2018. It was followed by six novels, eight children's books, thirteen short story collections which explore themes such as family roots, Lebanese village life, the war in Lebanon and the struggle of women for independence and self-expression and eleven non-fiction books. She is one of a number of Lebanese women authors known as the Beirut decentrists, who stayed in Beirut, shared the experience of the war and wrote about the conflict. She participated in the 1988 International Olympics Authors Festival in Calgary (Canada), and was a panelist and guest reader at the 1989 PEN International Congress in Toronto and Montreal. She has participated as panelist and lecturer in conferences in Germany, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Egypt and USA. Her works are quoted in Miriam Cooke's "War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War" (Cambridge University Press). Her novel, Flight Against Time, was translated to English in 1987 and first published by the Ragweed Press (Canada). On August 28, 2017 Emily was a recipient of the Goethe Medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany honoring non-Germans for meritorious contributions in the spirit of the Institute, under the motto “Language is the Key”, on February 6, 2018, President Michel Aoun decorated her with the Cedar Medal of Honor, Commander Rank, in recognition of her literary contributions.