On Sept. 12, the National Book Foundation, along with its exclusive media partner The New Yorker, announced the 2024 National Book Awards Longlist, which includes categories for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction and Fiction. The Longlisted poetry category features Fady Joudah’s [...] and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Something About Living. On Oct. 1, Joudah and Tuffaha were celebrated as two of the five finalists in the poetry category.
The nominations of these two Palestinian authors have been well-received by the Palestinian literary community at large and mark a significant movement toward mainstream recognition of the work of Palestinian poets.
George Abraham, a Palestinian poet and Executive Editor of Mizna, congratulated the poets in a post on X, “I don't remember the last time a Palestinian poet was nominated for the NBA (Naomi maybe?). And now seeing BOTH @LKTuffaha and @FadyJoudah. Well deserved doesn't even begin to cut it.”
Other publishing organizations that expressed their support include the Yale Review and Out-Spoken Press.
Joudah’s collection, published by Milkweed Editions, was released on March 3 of this year, and has since been the focus of podcasts, reviews, interviews and book lists. The book narrates a Palestinian present amidst ongoing genocide, creates a Palestinian future through the work of familial bonds, and ultimately subverts Western expectations of Palestinian ‘legitimacy’ or authenticity. In an interview this spring with Palestine Square, Joudah provided insight into the writing of the book, noting that in his work, he is “speaking with a generation that will grow up with the question of Palestine in America.”
Tuffaha’s collection, officially published by the University of Akron just one month after Joudah’s, won the Akron Poetry Prize in 2022. Something About Living has appeared on book lists, been the subject of reviews, and been featured at film festivals and book talks. Something About Living, in the words of its publisher, “explores Palestinian life through the lens of American language, revealing a legacy of obfuscation and erasure”. Tuffaha’s work delves into the geographies of English and Arabic, emphasizing the ways in which the English language can minimize and disappear the Palestinian poet.
Both collections, while grappling with these imposed linguistic limitations, interrogate the essential question of audience. The two books also search Palestinian histories, both past and living—looking for a grounding in place while reflecting on the violence that has and continues to shape Palestinian reality, but also on the inescapable intimacy of living.
Tuffaha and Joudah’s work have met and mingled in the literary world, as both authors are accomplished editors, translators, and writers.
Tuffaha, also an essayist, is the author of three poetry collections, all of which have received or been finalists for prestigious awards. Her books include Water & Salt (Red Hen Press), which won the 2018 Washington State Book Award for Poetry; Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House Press, July 2023), a finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award; and Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024), which won of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry.
Joudah has published six collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu, a book-length sequence of short poems structured around cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (2018); and Tethered to Stars (2021). He won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the United Kingdom, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award.