Nearly four months have passed since the Hamas attack on communities along Israeli’s southern fence with Gaza and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza, which continues to this day. The death toll is staggering: nearly 1,200 in Israel on October 7, and more than 25,000 in Gaza in the time since, this last figure without precedent among recent conflicts around the world. In the midst of so much destruction, we bring you a series of writing by Palestinians in Palestine and in diaspora. This series seeks to address the relative lack of Palestinian writing available in English translation, and just as crucially, the paucity of critical engagement with the literature that already exists. Consequently, the writing here will span genres—poetry, essay, fiction—but will also include interviews with Palestinian writers and reviews of the work currently available to readers of English.
Check back each month for new work, selected and introduced by poet, essayist, and translator Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.