Meet the Speaker: Isabella Hammad

Isabella Hammad is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Parisian (Grove Press, 2019), which won the 2019 Palestine Book Award. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and the debut was praised by the New York Times Book Review as a “dazzling…deeply-imagined historical novel.” A love story set amidst the political tumult of Palestine in the early 20th century, The Parisian was awarded the the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK, and the Plimpton Prize. She is also the author of the amazingly erudite essay, Recognizing the Stranger (Grove Atlantic, 2024), on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative. Hammad’s writing has also appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, The New York Times and elsewhere. Her story “Mr. Can’aan” won the 2019 O. Henry Prize and the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction.