Ashraf Zaghal
Ashraf Zaghal is a Palestinian Canadian poet and novelist who was born and raised in Jerusalem. He has published four poetry collections in Arabic, and his work has been translated into English, French, and Hebrew. Zaghal is an editor of an online magazine focused on progressive literature and translation. He lives in Toronto.
Writers & Books
Award History
Jury Citation
“This compelling story of Aziz, a Palestinian teenager in 2015 Jerusalem, and his family and community, is revealed in prose eloquent and substantial. The writing exhibits a miracle of tenderness in a harsh and perilous surround, treasuring the protagonist’s young internal voice within its larger, older cultural context of tension, loyalty, and violence. Through layered scene-building, intimate observation, and judicious detail, the novel bids a reader explore the complex emotional quandary of how we as a species might grasp a filament of humanity amid conditions that threaten to relegate any notion of love or compassion to the realm of illusion.”—2026 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Jury (David Chariandy, Conor Kerr, Kathleen Winter)Works Recognized by WT