Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a poet, essayist, and translator, works tirelessly to break down language and thoughtfully craft it to match the human condition. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award, Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention for the 2018 Arab American Award.
Her writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Revie, the Nation, Poets.org, Protean, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion (Georgia Press), We Call to the Eye and the Night (Persea Press), and Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books). She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024 she curated a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore.
Lena spent ten years working with journalists and editors as a volunteer for Seattle's Arab American community organizations. She helped to tell the stories of people living between two homelands, people who speak in translation and navigate the realities of long wars. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop.
Lena was born in Seattle, Washington but she was raised in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. She has lived the experiences of first-generation American, immigrant, and expatriate. Her heritage is Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian and she is fluent in Arabic and English. She has lived in and traveled across the Arab world, and many of her poems are inspired by the experience of crossing cultural, geographic and political borders, borders between languages, between the present and the living past.
Lena is passionate about a Free Palestine, the perfect cup of coffee, poetry, language, and gardening. She lives with her family in Redmond, Washington.
Author Website: https://www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lenatuffaha/
