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.

Books on TheBookRoads

1
You Exist Too Much
You Exist Too Much
Caught between her Palestinian heritage, her queer identity, and an overwhelming hunger for love, an unnamed young woman struggles to find somewhere she truly belongs. When a painful breakup sends her spiralling, she enters an unconventional treatment centre for what is described as love addiction. Through fragmented memories spanning Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States, she confronts her complicated relationship with her mother, the shame surrounding her sexuality, and the emotional wounds shaping her destructive romantic patterns. Intimate, provocative, and darkly funny, this novel explores the fine line between desire and obsession—and the difficult journey toward accepting yourself when you feel you are always too much for the world.
2026 Palestine United States
2
Our Arab
Our Arab
What does it mean to belong to a homeland you may never fully know? In this moving collection of essays, Palestinian-American writer Zaina Arafat explores the complexities of diaspora, inherited memory, and the longing for home. Moving between Nablus, Amman, the Appalachian Mountains, and Manhattan, she weaves together her family’s history, her experiences of identity and motherhood, and the pain of watching Palestine from afar. With tenderness, anger, and sharp insight, Arafat examines what it means to preserve a culture across generations while confronting displacement, erasure, and the shifting meaning of belonging. Our Arab is both an intimate family portrait and a powerful meditation on what it means to be Palestinian today.
2026 Palestine United States