Lena Khalaf Tuffaha – Poet, Essayist, and Translator

About the Artist

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work explores Palestinian life through the lens of American language, revealing legacies of obfuscation and erasure. Born in Seattle, Washington but 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 is co-founder of the Institute for Middle East Understanding and the author of five works of poetry: Letters from the Interior, the 2018 Washington State Book Award winner Water & Salt, the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Prize winner Arab in Newsland, Kaan and Her Sisters, and Something About Living, winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.

Tuffaha used her NBA platform to call out American complacency and inspire further direct action to end genocide and work toward a free Palestine. In her acceptance speech, she reoriented the audience in space-time, translating a good evening in the US into a good morning to “beloved Gaza,” translating an annual ceremony in ordinary time in the US into the 411th day of genocide.

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. Her poetry examines the intersection of memory, language, and heritage under the limitations imposed by imperialism and displacement.

Reading from “Something About Living”

Experience Lena Khalaf Tuffaha reading from her National Book Award-winning collection, exploring themes of Palestinian identity, memory, and resistance through experimental verse forms that challenge conventional narratives about belonging and citizenship.

To Be Self-Evident

Every empire tells its subjects a story
of revelation. The trees let down
their aging leaves, listless
in late drought. The children thrive on filtration,
their classroom air and their selfies sanitized.

Every empire seems invincible
as its borders submerge, its manicured hillsides
incinerate between guaranteed
next-day deliveries.

Every empire eulogizes
its value system, splurges
for pyrotechnics, decorates
its mausoleums for the holidays.

Every empire turns
against its colonies, cradling
the embassy’s crystal in bubble wrap,
packing extra treats for the dogs on the evacuation flight home.

Every empire promises
a revolution against itself. The children
are tasked with designing the future, growing
walls of hydroponic greens,
rebranding old protest anthems.
Every empire denies the iceberg
it crashes into, hires a chorus, funds the arts.

Every empire sings itself a lullaby.

From Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (University of Akron Press, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.

Continuing Voices

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s work stands as essential reading for understanding contemporary Palestinian experience and the power of poetry to preserve, resist, and transform. Her commitment to bearing witness through language offers vital perspectives on identity, belonging, and the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation.

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