BLUE DUNES – Karine Leno Ancellin

Karine Leno Ancellin’s fiction is her protagonist’s sojourn through the trials and tribulations of the Sahara’s Tuaregs, whose indigenous lifestyles face a dire squeeze between pernicious post-colonial rulers and avaricious external forces intent upon excavating rare minerals from their soil without investing in their wellbeing.
Modernity, both in its colonial and national garbs, proves inimical to a community that, other than poverty and denigration, remains divided into five states. Rooted in their culture, environment and traditions, Tuaregs pursue resistance despite obvious odds lined up against them though the world at large remains knowingly indifferent to their predicament.
Nancy Hoffberg, the sensitive journalist, witnesses acute challenges first-hand as she undertakes a precarious and no less surreptitious journey through Mauritania and Mali to witness the factional leaders meeting together in northern Niger to reach a consensusbased course of action for Azawad.
Her bare-bone venture, guaranteed by austere but trustworthy Tuaregs such as Yahya and Kayad allows a first-hand knowledge of the arduous life guerillas pursue with minimummost provisions also offering a unique opportunity to observe ecological features of the expansive Sahara. Nature and men, in this exceptionally engaging narrative contest, conflict and coalesce in a never-ending drama that keeps claiming more lives and incessant betrayals.
Professor Iftikhar Malik, University of Oxford-Bath (Authored ‘Pearls and Shards’ and ‘Pebbles from Sulaiman’s Mountain’).

Franco-American author, Karine Leno Ancellin has published two poetry collections, The Missing Angle (Riza Press, 2019), and Penelope Unbound (2023) where she delves into personal relationships in a globalized yet divided world, embracing her passion for ancient and contemporary Greece through intertextuality. She also edited two poetry Anthologies, Confinement Poetry Collection, 2019 and Wings of Thought in 2020 in collaboration with Angela Lyras. Her poetry has been translated in Greek, French and Spanish. Some of her poems have been put to jazz music by French composer Leila Olivesi (www.leilaolivesi.com).
Her forthcoming poetry collection, Pythia, is set to be released in 2026.
She was born in New York City where she grew up and then moved to Paris, then to West Africa’s Sahara region and then to Brussels. As a journalist based in Mauritania, she reported for outlets including BBC’s Focus on Africa, and magazines such as AfriqueAsie, and Le Moniteur, and freelanced for various French, American and Belgian alternative magazines.
She has written articles and essays for a large quantity of media.
Her academic pursuits include research focused on Kaleidoscopic Identities of Muslim Characters in English Language fiction after 9/11 for her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit of Brussels with Professor Heidy Margrit Muller. Before that, she had earned an MA in sociology at Jussieu, Paris, and one in Literature at the Charles V Institute, Paris. Now living in Athens, Greece, she currently teaches poetry, prose, and drama, engaging with the classics. She is the mother of four beautiful grown-up boys and returns periodically to the US. Please visit her website:

Karine Leno Ancellin