Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. A graduate in English language teaching and literature, he taught English at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools in Gaza from 2016 until 2019, and is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Abu Toha is the author of the debut poetry book Things you May Find Hidden in My Ear, published by City Lights in April 2022. The book is shortlisted for the 2022 Palestine Book Awards.
In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University; a Visiting Librarian at Harvard’s Houghton Library; and a Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow in the Harvard Divinity School. In 2020, Abu Toha gave talks and readings at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and the University of Arizona. He also spoke at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting held in Philadelphia in January 2020. In October 2021, University of Notre Dame’s Literatures, Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance lecture series hosted Abu Toha to speak about his poetry and work in Gaza.
Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published on the Poetry Foundation’s website, in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, Poem-a-Day, Banipal, Solstice, The Markaz Review, The New Arab, Peripheries, Jewish Currents, Democracy in Exile, and other journals.
‘The Journalist in Jenin’, a poem for Shireen Abu Akleh
What a Gazan Should Do During an Israeli Air Strike - a poem by Most
I was introduced to Mosab by Convisero mentor Sara Roy. Together, we created this webinar, From Inside The Wall: Conflict and the Flourishing of Culture In Gaza. We are contributing books to his Edward Said Library in Gaza.