Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
About
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is co-founder of the Institute for Middle East Understanding and the author of three works of poetry: Letters from the Interior ; the 2018 Washington State Book Award winner Water & Salt ; and the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Prize winner Arab in Newsland. Khalaf Tuffaha is the recipient of a 2019 Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship and the inaugural Poet-In-Residence at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle, Washington. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Hayden's Ferry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, TriQuarterly, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. Khalaf Tuffaha holds a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Based in Washington, Khalaf Tuffaha has also served as spokesperson for the Seattle, WA chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
