Malu Halasa

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a London-based writer and editor, who has a focus on Palestine, Iran, and Syria. Her latest book as coeditor, the anthology Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader, with Jordan Elgrably (7 Stories Press, 2025), was called “a love letter, a prayer for survival, and a poem of resistance” by Nan Goldin. In 2023, Halasa’s edited anthology Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023) was endorsed by Reading Lolita in Tehran’s Azar Nafisi as: “Through art and stories, [these women] reveal the truth.” Previous coedited anthologies by Halasa include Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (2014), with Zaher Omareen and Nawara Mahfoud; The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (2008), with Rana Salam; Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran (2005), with Hengameh Golestan, and the short series: Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations (2009), with Maziar Bahari; and Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images (2004), with Rosanne Khalaf. As a journalist, Halasa has written for The Guardian, FT and TLS. She was managing editor of the books imprint, Prince Claus Fund Library, in Amsterdam; a founding editor of Tank Magazine, in London, and Editor at Large for Portal 9, in Beirut. Her debut novel, Mother of All Pigs was reviewed by the New York Times as “a microcosmic portrait of … a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline.” Her fiction and nonfiction, exhibitions, and lectures chart a changing Middle East. Find her on Instagram @Malu Halasa.

Jordan Elgrably is an American, French and Moroccan writer and translator whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and the Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001–2020). He is the editor of Stories From the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights 2024), and co-editor with Malu Halasa of Sumūd: a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories Press 2025). Based in Montpellier, France and California, he tweets at Blue Sky.