Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer and political activist. She is the author of Mornings in Jenin and The Blue Between Sky and Water. Born to refugees of the Six Day War of 1967, she moved to the United States as a teenager, graduated college with a degree in biomedical science, and established a career in medical science. In July 2001, she founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a nongovernmental children’s organization dedicated to upholding the right to play for Palestinian children. In Against the Loveless World: A Novel (Washington Square Press), a young Palestinian woman fights for a better life for her family, traveling as a refugee throughout the Middle East. Born in Kuwait in the 1970s to Palestinian refugees, Nahr dreamed of finding the perfect man, marrying, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After making a temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation.
