Mosab Abu Toha is a renowned Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian. He was born in Al-Shati Refugee Camp, in the Northern Gaza Strip, and graduated in English from the Islamic University of Gaza. Abu Toha taught English at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools, and in 2017 he founded the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. From 2019 to 2020 he was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and he earned an MFA in Poetry from Syracuse University in 2023. He has given talks, readings and lectures at several universities throughout the U.S., and his poems and columns have been published in prestigious magazines and newspapers like The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Literary Hub, Poetry Magazine, The New Arab, The Progressive, The Guardian, and The Atlantic, among others.
In 2022, Mosab Abu Toha’s collection of poetry Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear won a Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. His most recent book, Forest of Noise, was released in October 2024, and a month later he received the IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding) 2024 Storyteller of the Year Award.
Through his Instagram account, Mosab Abu Toha bears witness to the genocide in Gaza and documents the daily horrors Palestinians are being forced to endure:
“What language should I use to make you move and stop the carnage? I’m warning about the extermination of my people in north Gaza. Please amplify this warning. Print it and stick on the walls of the streets. March in front of major news agencies and newspapers and hold everyone who works inside responsible for the misrepresentation and misinformation.”
Andaleeb Cartonera 