Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. Her most recent book, Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), was listed as a 2025 notable book by the American Library Association, and was winner of the 2024 National Book Award, the 2025 Washington State Book Award, and the 2025 Arab American Book Award. Something About Living will be published by the 87Press in the UK and Ireland, where it is a finalist for the PEN Heaney Prize. She is also the author of Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House, 2023), finalist for the Firecracker Prize, and Water & Salt (Red Hen, 2017), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award. Tuffaha’s writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Nation, Poets.org, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion and We Call to the Eye and the Night. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024, she was a guest editor for Words Without Borders where she curated the series Against Silence. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com