For National Arab American Heritage Month, observed annually during the month of April, we asked our member magazines and presses to share with us some of the work by Arab American writers that they recommend reading in celebration.
Poetry
Game Over Books | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9948112-7-6
THALASSA is “a love song of misery and grief, tracing the poet’s steps as she dives into the Underworld in search for her brother.”
The Raven, The Bayou, and The Willow by Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman
Flowersong Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1953447319
Taking readers “from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico,” this collection “encompasses the history, nature, mythology, and identities of these spaces and how to find childhood living on the bayou.”
Boa Editions | 2025
ISBN: 9781960145475
In this poetry collection, alexandra “invites readers into a world bristling with family, memory, home, and inheritance—all in the wake of dislocation and fracture.”
Border Wisdom by Ahmad Almallah
Winter Editions | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-959708-06-3
This poetry collection “blurs the borders between languages, between the living and the dead, between presence and absence.”
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Graywolf Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64445-050-5
Almontaser’s debut poetry collection is “a love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before.”
Three Rooms Press | 2012
ISBN: 978-0983581383
In Alyan’s first full-length collection, she “taps into astrology and love with wild abandon and anthropomorphizes cities and nations to bring the effects of war into crystal clear, heart-wrenching focus.”
trace press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-775-2567-6-2
Edited by Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj, this bilingual poetry anthology—in which “language dissolves into cities, landscapes, or portals that open to rubble, or only air”—features George Abraham, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Zeena Faulk, Miled Faiza, and more poets and translators writing in Arabic and English.
Bayna Bayna: In-Between by Zeina Azzam
The Poetry Box | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948461-84-9
Azzam’s collection “reflects on the feeling of being in-between home and exile, childhood and adulthood, wholeness and loss, and living and dying.”
An Eye in Each Square by Lauren Camp
River River Books | 2023
ISBN: 9798988137801
This collection “offers social critique within an imaginative biography of enigmatic painter Agnes Martin and a treatise on the multiplicities of the natural world.”
TRP: The University Press of SHSU | 2026
ISBN: 9781680034523
Is Is Enough “begins in heritage and harmony then breaks apart into the strange world and tautly stretched emotions that accompany dementia.”
Tupelo Press | 2020
ISBN: 978-1946482327
In these “vulnerable poems of obsession,” Camp “places motivation deep in the background, following instead a chain reaction between pain and pleasure.”
Graywolf Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-64445-377-3
Hide is “a restless innovation of form and multimodal expression breaking open words across Arabic, English, and Spanish to release hidden meanings.”
La Syrena: Visions of a Syrian Mermaid from Space by Banah el Ghadbanah
Dzanc Books | 2022
ISBN: 9781950539444
This collection “weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of Arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform.”
The January Children by Safia Elhillo
African Poetry Book Fund | 2017
ISBN: 9780803295988
Elhillo’s collection “depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home.”
The Hungering Years by Summer Farah
Host Publications | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9905483-4-3
“Through intimate conversations with fellow Arab-American writer and literary ancestor Etel Adnan,” this poetry collection “finds the courage to ask: What is art? An escape? A reflection? Another unhealthy attachment?”
The Gold Shop of Ba-‘Ali by Yahya Frederickson
Lost Horse Press | 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9911465-2-9
In this collection, “in a land he is bound to through experience and marriage, a land of most ecstatic architecture, Yemen—we find gracefully created, intricate room-on-room dimensions of human lives, legacies, and linkage,” according to Naomi Shihab Nye.
In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls by Majda Gama
Wandering Aengus Press | 2025
ISBN: 9798218516222
According to Eman Quotah, this collection “vividly chronicles girlhood, womanhood, personhood, humanhood, the passage of time, the indelibility of history, and the grief and joy of being in this world and on this earth.”
Fugitive/Refuge by Philip Metres
Copper Canyon Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781556596698
In this book-length qasida, Metres “follows the journey of his refugee ancestors—from Lebanon to Mexico to the United States—in a vivid exploration of what it means to long for home.”
Tupelo Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781961209589
Edited by Jennifer Jean, this anthology features “contemporary poetry by forty women poets from eleven Arab nations,” including Muna Alaasi, Laila Alahdab, Marwa Abo Daif, and more.
Voice/Poems by Susan Azar Porterfield
Trio House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1949487466
According to Zeeshan Pathan, Porterfield is a “master of restraint and deeply mines the domestic interior of her life in poem after poem.”
Nightboat Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781643622910
According to Natalie Shapero, these poems “spin absurdist nightmares of art and history, of links and screenshots and mediated engagement with atrocity, of the genocide against Palestinians and the many attendant erasures.”
metal used for beauty alone by Claudia Saleeby Savage
The Poetry Box | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-956285-39-0
“Equal parts experimental bellow and love utterance,” this collection is “a plea for music as prayer, music as protest, music as balm, and music as change.”
TERROR COUNTER by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
Deep Vellum | 2025
ISBN: 9781646053797
This poetry collection “acts against the many languages—interpersonal, legal, literary, rhetorical—constricting the lives and meanings of Palestinians.”
Zagra Zephyrs by A. A. Telmesani
Tofu Ink Arts Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781958661291
This poetry collection invites readers to “step into the dazzling expanse of the Zāgra Valley Universe, a realm where the veil between the terrestrial and the celestial is drawn back by the hand of Āyā the Heliopolite.”
Kaan and Her Sisters by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Trio House Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1949487145
This collection “illuminates the work of grief and survival, the sordid legacies of official historical record and the liberatory practice of intimate narration.”
Trio House Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1949487121
Zineh’s “capturing of the romantic and violent, the personal and the political, is a testament to his unwavering dedication to plumbing the depths of emotion that lie in psychological and physical territories alike.”
Fiction
Whiskey Tit | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952600-62-3
Set in “Midwestern flyover country,” the stories in this collection “weave a rich and sometimes comic tapestry of longing, addiction, sex, and loss.”
Golden Threads by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Ayin Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961814-21-9
This book for middle-grade readers “will take people of all ages on a journey into the multi-faith world of Morocco’s craftspeople, inspiring generative conversations about art, labor, community, and technology for years to come.”
We Walked On by Thérèse Soukar Chehade
Regal House Publishing | 2024
ISBN: 9781646035205
Set during Lebanon’s civil war, Chehade’s novel “immerses readers in the landscape of war, weaving political unrest into everyday life.”
The Hanged Man by Katherine Conner
Black Lawrence Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781625572219
In this collection of linked stories, “three Lebanese-American sisters encounter their missing mother six years after she vanished from their lives.”
Cyberscion by Thomas Bulen Jacobs
Neon Hemlock | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-966503-20-0
According to Ann LeBlanc, this novella is “a thrilling and kinetic cyberheist … full of delicious meals, cyber-topology, expected betrayals, and unexpected loyalty.”
Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan
Restless Books | 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63206-142-3
In twenty-eight stories, Unnikrishnan follows guest workers “brought in to construct the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.”
Nonfiction
Seven Stories Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781644215289
In this book, Baroud “weaves together past and present, illuminating how historical forces shaped the collective consciousness and steadfast resilience of the Palestinian people.”
The Weight of Ghosts by Laila Halaby
Red Hen Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-63628-134-6
This memoir is “a lyrical reclaiming and an insistence by the author that she own the rights to her story, which is American flavored with an unreleasing elsewhere.”
The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt by Hédi A. Jaouad
Three Rooms Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-953103-72-7
In this biography, the “legendary fin-de-siècle adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt emerges as a radically modern figure who lived on her own terms—crossing boundaries of gender, faith, empire, and identity.”
Seven Stories Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781644214800
This book “documents how digital platforms and technology companies based in the United States support the Israeli settler-colonial project.”
Literary Magazines
“LOOK: 7odood Briefs!” by leena aboutaleb
ANMLY | 2022
This poem begins, “KUWAIT / Look, The Soldier Says, Bored, Gun Sleeping Mid-Air. My Father Holding Our Papers / At The Window Like A Bargain, A Begging / LOOK, My Mother Says…”
Oyster River Pages | 2024
The poem “Wild Rabbit” begins, “I wait all day for the sun to peak at its favorite spot / I catch the feeling of white light on my eyelids for only a moment / Music plays on the horizon somewhere…”
“Ghost Clan” by Youssef Alaoui
Oyster River Pages | 2021
This poem begins, “A dream dislodges from our skeleton / dreary creatures float above us / in vacant skies…”
“Why it Matters how Bullfrogs Swallow” by Lauren Camp
West Trestle Review | 2026
This poem begins, “When I don’t know what to do with so much / daylight and fistfuls of the newest / what if alone, I cross / the street straight into a range of flinty headlights.”
“Thinking about na3na3” by noam keim
ALOCASIA | 2023
This poem begins, “We have been experiencing intense heat waves in Philadelphia, unrelenting warmth that doesn’t evaporate even in the darkest hours of the night.”
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review | 2025
The poem “Before” begins, “I think about the olive trees I have never / seen but that I know grow on my ancestors’ / land somewhere against the soft slope of a / mountain in Lebanon.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2026
This poem begins, “Ballooning into a sky that now forgets / To be anything but gray. All the red that wants to be / the dark. Give me another / Screen. Give me another lens…”
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This play excerpt begins, “(We see a house filled with moving boxes and one naked light bulb on the ceiling. We hear the last moments of rain. A small shadow moves quickly across the wall.”
“Feast or Famine” by Glenn Shaheen
ANMLY | 2024
This poem begins, “heaven / Would any of us childhood pals have stuck together, that old tape, if not for distance?”
The Common | 2021
This special portfolio features nonfiction by Mona Kareem and poetry by Hala Alyan, Rasha Alduwaisan, Zeina Hashem Beck, and more.
The Sun | 2017
This essay begins, “It’s already sweltering at sunrise on this August Sunday morning in Norfolk, Virginia. My Lebanese grandfather is taking my brother and me fishing for blue crabs…”
“Romancing the Artichoke” by Rasha Abdulhadi
ALOCASIA | 2024
This poem begins, “oh darling it’s been so long / and you’ve been made so / tender by time, succulent at the root, / past prickle and thorn…”
beestung | 2023
The poem “Sing the child insurgent” begins, “the young make the best revolutionaries, minds clear / as sapphire, hearts scythed, with diamond-dusted blades / they reap their elders’ retreats.”
“the hookah” by Mandy Shunnarah
beestung | 2024
This poem begins, “I thought it was a vase— / towering red glass, ornate as a trophy, / snaking tubes to control the water level.”
“Vibrating with Recognition” by Esther Azar
Lilith | 2023
This essay begins, “My palate has always been drawn to the pungent flavors of spice, Kehmoon with lemon, Baharat with cinnamon and of course…”
