Every Moment Is a Life

Compiled by bestselling author susan abulhawa, an Arabic-English bilingual anthology of true stories from eighteen young Palestinian writers trying to survive the genocide in Gaza. In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice through the Rafah crossing. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss—of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They’d fled from place to place as Israel’s colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community. Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram’s loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr’s mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents. Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life under genocide, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These true stories are raw and real, capturing human moments—buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee—all set against the backdrop of history’s first livestreamed ethnic cleansing. With courage, anger, love, agony, and—impossibly—hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever. *All proceeds go to the contributors in Gaza and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival

susan abulhawa is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. She was born to refugees of the Six-Day War of 1967, when her family’s land was seized and Israel captured what remained of Palestine. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, translated into thirty languages, has sold over a million copies worldwide and is considered a classic in Palestinian literature. Her other works include The Blue Between Sky and Water and Against the Loveless World, an Aspen Words Literary Prize and Atheneum Prize finalist and winner of the Arab American Book Award and the Palestine Book Award, along with, most recently, the short story collection she edited of writers from Gaza, Every Moment is a Life. abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian children. Huzama Hubayeb is a Palestinian novelist. She won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her novel Velvet, which was translated into English and selected among the fifty most significant Arabic novels of the twenty-first century. She is also the author of The Root of Passion (2007) and Before the Queen Falls Asleep (2011), four short story collections, and two poetry collections.