Marcia H. HowardAuthor in Residence

Yahya Ashour | يحيى عاشور is a poet, mentor, editor, and translator, born and raised in Gaza on April 22, 1998, and has been exiled in the US since Oct 2023.

He is an honorary fellow in writing at the University of Iowa and the author of the e-book “A Gaza of Siege & Genocide” (Mizna, 2024). Ashour’s portfolio also includes a poetry collection and two children’s books in Arabic. His work has been featured in several anthologies and journals internationally, including the MQR and ArabLit.

His poetry manuscript-in-progress received an honorable mention from the Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowship, and his first children’s book won the Arab Forum for Children’s Books Publishers award and made the iBBY honor list.

He has received multiple scholarships and fellowships and has read poetry at several organizations and over 35 U.S. universities, including Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, and UPenn. His poetry has been translated into 11 languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, and Bengali.

Ashour studied Sociology & Psychology and worked as a creative writing mentor in Gaza. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in California.

ABOUT A Gaza of Siege & Genocide (Mizna, 2024)

Yahya Ashour is an acclaimed poet known for his evocative and poignant works. His poetry, which often explores themes of identity, exile, and the human condition, has resonated deeply with audiences worldwide.

George Abraham writes: “A Gaza of Seige & Genocide is more than a testament to Palestinian resilience and survival; it is a political action insistent on the radical hope that poetry might play some role in saving his family and people. Through these poems and illustrations, Ashour unravels layers of complex grief, moving beyond a poetics of mere witness, insisting, ‘Rejoice, Gaza / we are no longer murdered / while the world is sleeping, / the world is wide awake.’ In Yahya Ashour’s poetry, we find a microcosm comprising the contemporary history of Gaza and the future of the Palestinian people.”

EVENTS with YAHYA

Details coming soon.