Turkia Loucif is an Algerian writer and journalist whose work moves fluidly across fiction, poetry, and cultural commentary, engaging both Arab and international literary spaces. Writing with a voice that blends imagination, social awareness, and emotional urgency, she has established herself as a distinctive presence in contemporary Algerian literature.
Her published books include the fantasy novel Legend of Sincabi, released by Tidiklart Publishing House in Algeria, the short novel Virginia Park published in 2018, and the short story collection Abboud Cannot Bear the Whip, published by Khayal Publishing House in 2021. Her storytelling extends beyond the page; her short story My Arajouat, Mousa, and the Others was adapted for the stage as Dance of the Arajouat, affirming the performative strength and visual depth of her narrative imagination.
Loucif’s literary achievements have been widely recognized. Legend of Sincabi received the Golden Jerusalem House Award at the Children’s Book Fair in 2023 and was also honored by the Qalam Al-Safir Academy in the Netherlands. Her works Legend of Sincabi and Virginia Park were celebrated during the Sixth Literary Days in 2017, while Abboud Cannot Bear the Whip was honored by the Hassan Hassani Cultural Center during the Eighth Literary Days in 2023. Her writing has earned multiple awards across regional and international platforms, including distinctions for her stories The Day I Spoke with the Pasha and My Fresh Fruit, as well as first place in the Moroccan police story competition in 2021.
Her literary reach continues through translation and collaboration. Legend of Sincabi was translated into English in 2025, and her short stories and poems have appeared in English in international literary magazines and platforms such as Orfeu and Sidharth. She has also contributed to several collective volumes, including All Together and an Indian anthology in the essay category.
Beyond authorship, Turkia Loucif actively participates in shaping literary culture. She has served as a jury member for international poetry and short story competitions, including those organized by Sicily News and Golden Story Magazine. She currently works in the cultural section of Al-Masar Al-Arabi newspaper, where an excerpt from Legend of Sincabi was selected as the best daily text. In January 2026, she received a certificate of appreciation in journalism from the Chinese Poetry Society, further underscoring her role as a cultural bridge across languages and borders.
Judgment in a Rejected Case
Turkia Loucif
Algeria
The lawyer collected my case papers
And he said your case is rejected
The judge will reject it
And the offender rejects it
And the violinist rejects it
Your crime maam is that you dropped the victim
Your crime maam what happened to him
Crazy singing
Crazy writes love words
I said I am innocent sir
And the rain showers are witness
And my broken rain
And my short skirt
And my hair flowing
Witnesses sir
We did not see the victim
The lawyer returns and checks the papers
He found a poem he read
She shivered and shouted I am accused
The lawyer read
She dragged my killer and her broken emollient
I got wet and squeezed the skirt
Slim figure wet butterfly
Jana Haha trembling and eulogizing
I dried it and gave it my perfume
I perfumed and strutted and left
My perfume draws me to it
The thief of my heart shivered wet
And I shivered in hope
And my perfume is a witness to it
A Date with Chrysanthemums
Turkia Loucif
Algeria
She chose her finest dresses and adorned herself
I went to the chrysanthemum fields and sang
Her notebook scattered the tones so she played
On the strings of foolish ghouls
And I went I cried and complained
Her worries and she managed
Directed by foolish ghouls
So she gathered I engaged them and sent a message
For the tall slender ogre
Your hair is scary your classes are past the autumn
I said ignore my fangs that you are afraid of
Ignore my wrinkles that you see
With all pleasure she gave me the crown of the letter
The terrible ogre approached and smiled
The princess wrote from an attack letter
The horrible ogre came and they were shocked
Stupid I said and the rest of the ghouls
She said I gathered to hear my music
And take from myself I am in the middle of the daisy fields
He revolted and attacked
The stupid feelings of the ghouls smell every carcass
And you are the princess with the crown of your letter
I named you Haifa Princess you are competing with the chrysanthemum
Color letter melody dance and synthesis
I was not the ogre my joy
I am your protector so I wait
Do not judge by your letter and your whip
I am the detector of the big ghouls
I gathered planned and painted
And I cursed every carcass
And you are a chaste princess
My joy you are waiting
Do not judge and do not rush
Your smell is fragrant letter spread in the sky
And the lovers cursed him
You mean me
My fangs tore the cracks
I brought it between my lips for every ogre I miss
I spotted it followed it
I brought it after hypocrisy
I promised her so I deceived her
And crucified and burned it
Drying the papers
My joy I crowned you today Amira Al Harf
In this meeting
Pick me up
Relieve me when my breath is choking
My soul oscillates between departure and survival
Relieve me when my words become vague
And you lose meaning and get lost
So it does not reach you
Relieve me when they wrap around me
And you are around me
And around me
So I cannot find you a lover
And I will not find you soon
So I want you to help
He pulled me out of the paper rubble
He pulled me out of old memories
And the castle of love whose pillars collapsed
I am under the rubble crying for help
And crying for help
You were an idiot and you were the idiot
Corridors whose candles dimmed
And the last candles were loaded
I approached the rubble and breathed
And you were the rubble and you rode
On my breath
I shouted and pulled me out
I came and sighed and went out
Delightful Butterfly
Turkia Loucif
Algeria
I ask her why are you hovering around me
Her eyes speak green
You land on the dry branch it is affected
She sheds dew from her eyes on yellowish paper
I see you my mother
And the world remembers me and more
You look like a big butterfly even more
She was delightful
And you were the youngest cheerful
Did I answer your question
Tell me how were you
And where are the butterflies in the flowering field
Showed the cheerful great influence
And she moved her wings
The weight of her wings
And her eyeballs were teary
I am no longer the cheerful butterfly
Be the cheerful butterfly
The field is green
And the cast is red
And the dew is dripping
Stay away from my dry branch and more
Threads weave and multiply
And wrap you around like me
She was looking
Across these poems, Turkia Loucif constructs a layered poetic world where judgment is not confined to a courtroom but spreads into fields, gardens, memory, and the intimate dialogue between self and other, revealing how accusation operates culturally, emotionally, and symbolically. In Judgment in a Rejected Case, the language of law collapses under the weight of lived experience, as rejection multiplies mechanically while the speaker’s body, clothing, scent, and movement become involuntary evidence, suggesting that femininity itself is placed on trial long before any crime is named. This logic of surveillance and suspicion continues into A Date with Chrysanthemums, where fairy tale imagery, ogres, princesses, crowns, letters, and music blur into a dreamlike allegory of power, desire, protection, and betrayal, exposing how narratives of rescue and monstrosity coexist and exchange masks. Here, writing itself becomes a battlefield, the letter both a crown and a weapon, as language oscillates between salvation and harm, sincerity and hypocrisy, devotion and violence. Delightful Butterfly softens the surface yet deepens the wound, transforming judgment into inheritance and memory, where the butterfly becomes mother, self, and warning, and fragility is no longer weakness but accumulated wisdom. Across the three poems, Loucif repeatedly resists linear storytelling, allowing repetition, excess, and shifts in voice to mirror psychological pressure, emotional overload, and the instability of identity under constant evaluation. Nature imagery fields, rain, chrysanthemums, dew, wings does not function as decoration but as an alternative moral system, one that listens when institutions do not and remembers when language fractures. The feminine presence in these poems is not idealized or purified but insistently human, sensorial, contradictory, capable of desire, fear, rage, tenderness, and self protection at once. By weaving legal rhetoric, mythic figures, and intimate confession, Loucif transforms poetry into a space of counter judgment, where survival is articulated through imagination and testimony through sensation, and where the act of writing itself stands as an ethical refusal to be reduced, silenced, or formally dismissed.
