Born in 1970, Hassan El Ouazzani is a poet, researcher, and a key player in the promotion of literature in Morocco. 

Alongside fellow poets Jalal El-Hakmaoui, Mahmoud Abdelghani, Abdelilah Salhi and Yassin Adnan, El Ouazzani brought the prose-poem to prominence in Moroccan poetry in the 1990s. His first poetry collection, A Truce (1997), received considerable praise in the Arab world and beyond, leading him to participate in various international poetry festivals such as in Medellin (Colombia) or Poetry International in Rotterdam (Netherlands).

In the following two decades, El Ouazzani produced various academic studies on Moroccan literature and its publishing industry, including Modern Maghrebi Literature: 1929-1999 in 2002 and The book sector in Morocco in 2009. In 2017, El Ouazzani returned to poetry and published his second collection, McLuhan’s dreams, named after Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Critics praised El Ouazzani’s return to themes explored in A Truce, expressed following an additional 20 years of ‘poetic maturity’.

El Ouazzani has also been involved in the promotion of Moroccan literature for many years, having served as Head of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture’s Book Directorate for eight years and as former Secretary General of the Moroccan House of Poetry. He also led several editions of the Casablanca Book Fair.