About
Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer and journalist whose work explores identity, displacement, sexuality, and belonging. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, was published in 2020 and won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. Her writing has appeared in prominent publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, and Harper’s Bazaar. Arafat has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation and Jack Jones Literary Arts, and was named a Champion of Pride by The Advocate. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MA from Columbia University. She teaches writing at Hunter College and has also taught at Barnard College. Her work frequently examines the intersections of Arab identity, queerness, family, and the search for home. She lives in New York with her family.
