Selected Writing

Wake (a longform essay on a Mexico earthquake and the surprising aftermath of disaster, Ploughshares Solos, 2023 – forthcoming)

This Shattering (an essay in four voices about a sudden invasion, Craft, 2023 – forthcoming)

Can’t Go Back the Way We Came (excerpt from a book about Lesvos, Greece, at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015-6, Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, 2023 – forthcoming)

Cairo Song (an essay about a return journey to Cairo, Granta, 2023)

Things I Didn’t Know (an essay set in Istanbul and Cairo, on losing and finding homes, Granta, 2017)

Life after the Squares: Reflections on the Consequences of the Occupy Movements (Social Movement Studies, 2016 and Alexia in Spanish translation, 2016)

A Wish Not to Betray: Some Thoughts on Writing and Translating Revolution (a piece on translation, grief, betrayal, and writing as a way through, in Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, London: Routledge, November 2015)

Cairo: September 2014 (an essay on a return and a reckoning, Granta, 2015)

To Get to Other Places You Lost (a series of poems in response to Bassem Magdy’s winning work for The Abraaj Group Art Prize, 2014)

This July (an essay on collective heartbreak, Granta, 2013)

To Willingly Enter the Circles, the Square (an essay on a volunteer taskforce combating sexual violence in Tahrir Square, Jadaliyya, 2013)

Revolution Revived (a diary of the second wave of the Egyptian revolution, Granta, 2011) 

A Taste of Four Cities (a short story set in Barcelona, Cairo, Winchester, and Bergerac, in A Sea of Words: Short Stories by 30 Young Writers, Barcelona: IEMed/Icaria, 2011)