The Palestine Book Awards Announces 2025 Longlist

The Palestine Book Awards have announced the longlist for this year’s awards. This year marks a horrifying time for the people of Palestine — a year scarred by ongoing war and genocide. Yet, in the face of unimaginable suffering, Palestinian writers and scholars — alongside global voices in solidarity — continue to rise. Through literature, research, and storytelling, they affirm an enduring truth: we are here, and we are here to stay.

Established in 2012, the Palestine Book Awards honors the best new books in English about any aspect of Palestine. This year saw a record-breaking 80+ submissions, making 2025 the largest and most far-reaching year in the history of the Awards. The nominated works span fiction, memoir, poetry, academic research, and children’s literature — reflecting a deeply rooted, multifaceted commitment to the Palestinian cause across generations and disciplines.

From groundbreaking academic studies to powerful narratives written for children, the longlisted books offer vital insight into Palestinian history, identity, struggle, and imagination. Whether addressing the Nakba, the present war and genocide, or future hopes for liberation, these titles contribute to a growing and urgent global conversation.

This year’s longlist is as follows:

• Abu Al-Hayyat, Maya
  No One Knows Their Blood Type

• Abdulkarim, Lina M.
  It Could Have Been Me

• Abourahme, Nasser
  The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony

• Abraham, George (Editor) and Hindi, Noor (Editor)
  Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry

• Alareer, Refaat
  If I Must Die

• Aziza, Sarah
  The Hollow Half

• Brehony, Louis (Editor) and Hamdi, Tahrir (Editor)
  Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings

• Dana, Karam
  To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States

• Ebeid, Rifk
  Kamal’s Key

• El Hassan, Azza
  The Afterlife of Palestinian Images

• El-Kurd, Mohammed
  Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

• El Akkad, Omar
  One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

• Matar, Dina (Editor) and Tawil-Souri, Helga (Editor)
  Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media

• Mishra, Pankaj
  The World After Gaza

• Muna, Mahmoud (Editor) and Teller, Matthew (Editor)
  Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture

• Sabawi, Samah
  Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A Family Story from Gaza

• Salem, Shadi
  Beneath the Gaza Sky

• Shambrook, Peter
  Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939

• Tarbush, Mohammad
  My Palestine: An Impossible Exile

• Yap, Chin-Chin
  Palestine in the Air: A Cultural History of Palestinian Aviation

The shortlist will be announced in July, and the final winners will be revealed in November. Check out the Palestine Book Awards for past winners and more details.

Virtual: Book Launch for Naseej: Life‑Weavings of Palestine, 2 July

Join Insaniyyat, the Society for Palestinian Anthropologists, for the the online launch of their first book project, Naseej: Life-Weavings of Palestine (Pluto Press, 2025). Naseej, meaning “tapestry” in Arabic, is a book about diverse forms of life, communities, histories and continuities in Palestine. It compiles essays, short stories, poetry, interviews, and visual art to tell an aspect of the Palestinian story that has not been told: the severing of Palestinians from vast and ancient regional histories, and the stifling of its precious patchwork of languages, ethnicities, cultures, religions and practices.

Arriving at a moment of utter devastation – one of the most difficult in Palestinian history – this vibrant collection celebrates the diversity of life in Palestine. From the trajectories of Romani groups to the formations of religious communities like Ahmadiyya Muslims in Haifa, to the political experience of Black Palestinians and much more, Naseej asks what kind of threads remain of this tapestry after some 150 years of modernity and colonialism.

The event will feature reflections and readings from the editors of the book, Arpan Roy and Noura Salahaldeen, as well as Jumana Manna, Ahdaf Soueif, Salim Tamari, and Sheikha Helawy.

The online event will be held on Wednesday, July 2, 2025 at 4:00 PM Palestine / 9:00 AM EST via Zoom. Register here to attend.

Ramallah: 5 Short Films at I Shall Carve The Sun’s Words, 1 July

Join Dar Jacir and the A M Qattan Foundation Tuesday, July 1st at 18:00 for a screening of five short films not to be missed!!!

I Shall Carve the Sun’s Words, curated by Reem Shadid, is an exhibition that brings together artists and cultural practitioners committed to confronting the crisis of reading history in the present—without hesitation or compromise.

The exhibition seeks to reclaim perceptions of liberation as a “praxis,” and to re-question the complex entanglements between history, time, occupation, and the fragmented experiences of Palestinians across occupied Palestine and the diaspora.

As part of the exhibition’s public program, the organizers present a selection of short art films that portray a composition of our living conditions. These films attempt to trace memory, remembrance, and the transformation tethered to time—whether in exile or under occupation.

They explore themes such as the collision of childhood with reality, isolation, the surreal nature of time, and the act of image-making as a tool for preservation and recollection. The films employ a variety of artistic tools, including animation, movement and dance, and archival materials—creating a sense of intimacy between collective experience and personal engagement with it.

Contact Dar Jacir with questions and for more information.

New York: Contemporary Arab Cinema at Brooklyn Academy of Music, 9-17 July

From July 9 through July 17, Brooklyn Academy of Music will be hosting its annual series of Contemporary Arab Cinema. This year’s series spotlights a region still reckoning with the weight of its past and the uncertainty of its future. In Syria, after 55 years, the long shadow of the Assad regime has lifted. Lebanon inches towards reform with a new President and cabinet. In Gaza and Sudan war rages on, a relentless crisis with no clear end in sight. From these shifting landscapes come a vital selection of films—not just about survival, but also about agency, identity, and imagination.

This year’s selection features a number of films by Palestinian filmmakers and about Palestine, including:

• To A Land Unknown, directed by Mahdi Fleifel, on July 9

• Happy Holidays, directed by Scandar Copti, on July 12

• Thank You For Banking With Us, directed by Laila Abbas, on July 13

• Coexistence, My Ass!, directed by Amber Fares, on July 15

Visit BAM to check out the full lineup and to purchase your tickets.

Book of the Week

VOICES OF RESISTANCE is the most powerful work of collective testament I have ever read. It is a breathtaking and spirit-forging book. It tells it as it is. It could not be more crucial or more urgent. Read it now.

—Ali Smith

For two years, the world has witnessed image after devastating image from Israel’s genocide in Gaza: videos, photos, and Instagram reels showing blanket bombardment, cities in ruin, and entire families pulled from the rubble of their homes. Such enormity can be difficult to process, but behind each image lie ordinary lives full of hope, love and community.

In these diaries, four Gazan women – Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana and Ala'a Obaid – offer first-hand accounts of Israeli airstrikes, forced displacement and engineered famine. These atrocities are documented alongside the everyday defiance of Palestinians: from the neighbour who fashions an ashtray from the shrapnel of an Israeli missile, to the street vendor who donates his last egg for a child’s birthday cake, to the community of displaced people who pool their resources to stage a traditional wedding.

Even when displaced, under fire, forced to bury loved ones, or thrown on the mercy of a devastated health system, the writers of these diaries never abandon their humanity, their individuality, or their belief in the future of Gaza. These are not stories of pity; these are stories filled with love, humour, and the beauty of Palestinian people and culture. In the face of genocide, the existence of these diaries, like the very survival of their authors, is an act of resistance.

VOICES OF RESISTANCE publishes on July 17. You can preorder your copy from Comma Press.

Media Roundup

Gaza Pages, June 27, 2025 – The editors of The Avery Review introduce the “Gaza Pages” of their latest issue, dedicating it “to life and the living; to writing as witness, writing as insistence. As two million Palestinian people in Gaza continue to fight for life, to create and save what they can every day, to raise their children and take care of their loved ones, to find ways to go on, the writers of Gaza have continued to write.”

Return to the Sky – A poem by Nasser Rabah, in translation by Wiam El-Tamami: “Return. / To a country that produces / poetry and oranges. To girls / swaying like geese on their way / to school—on their way over / here.”

In Fragments, in Fire: Four Books from Gaza – Alaa Alqaisi reviews four recent books from Gaza published in English to make the case for what she calls survival literature: “There are cities that fall all at once and cities that fall slowly, but Gaza is neither. Gaza falls repeatedly, in cycles that erase and then erase again, each collapse more total than the one before. It is a geography of vanishing, of absence becoming permanent.”

A Thorn in the Eye of the Occupation – The Avery Review interviews Husam Maarouf about the difficulties of launching and running a new publishing house, Gaza Publications, under conditions of genocide.

Ghassan Kanafani’s “Guerrilla Rhetoric,” Then and Now – Jay Murphy reviews the recent collection of Ghassan Kanafani’s Selected Political Writings to study, as Kanafani would, the applicability of his political thought to the present moment.

Historicide in Gaza – Lydia Wilson argues that Israel is destroying history itself — leveling archives and libraries, decimating historical artifacts and archaeological sites, looting cultural institutions and burning books — in order that future accounts of our present can only be narrated from the Israeli official position. 

Wave of Domination – Dylan Saba argues that the resurgent politics of domination in both domestic and global politics since October 7 represents the wholesale demise of the liberal order.

How Support for Palestine Became a Hate Crime – Mari Cohen examines how hate crime legislation in the United States is increasingly becoming a weapon for collapsing anti-Zionism and antisemitism by heightening charges against pro-Palestinian activists.

Gaza: The War on Dialysis – Reporting from Gaza, Amro Hamada describes the balancing act of sustaining the lives of his patients with kidney failure as a synecdoche of the broader impossibility of survival under the blockade and the constant bombardment.

Third Red Scare, Same as the First – Ben Nadler and Oksana Mironova explore the tactical and ideological parallels between the First Red Scare and the present targeting of Palestinian activists across the United States.

Timed for Impunity: Israel’s War on Iran – Yara Hawari examines the escalation between Iran and Israel and discusses the broader political forces driving it.

No Truce on Horizon as Gaza’s Children Starve – Maureen Clare Murphy reports on how the Iran-Israel ceasefire, in tandem with the ongoing failures of the Israeli ground operation in Gaza, are building pressure for Israel to agree to a ceasefire. 

As Palestinians Are Massacred for Staying, Israelis Are Desperate to Flee – Joseph Massad describes how the Israeli government has imposed exit bans on Israelis trying to flee retaliatory strikes from Iran, even as Palestinians remain steadfast in wanting to remain in Gaza.

Keir Starmer’s Palestine Action Ban Is a Threat to Democracy – Daniel Finn examines the lack of legal precedent in the UK government’s decision to proscribe the group Palestine Action as a terrorist group. 

Suffocation – Baraa’h Qandeel, an emerging literary translator in Gaza, self-translates her own poem: “I will pour out all the questions now, / burn the question marks, / and endure all this sizzling pain inside me / until night fall, / when the cycle repeats, and I spit out my fire.”

TERROR COUNTER—Excerpts – Mizna shares excerpts of Fargo Nissim Tbakhi’s debut collection of poetry: “When my poems disintegrate You will remain in the documents of the court / When the courts disintegrate You will slip with me into anonymity / Where we began and where we looked for love.”

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