Fatena Al-Ghorra is a Palestinian poet and journalist originally from Gaza, where she was a well-known media personality. In 2010 she applied for asylum in Belgium. She has had Belgian nationality since 2016. As a journalist she worked for Al Jazeera, now for Alarabi: ‘diffa thaltha’. She is also a performer and organizer of a poetry project called: Fatena’s poetry salon. She has participated in international festivals and poetry projects around the world and in 2017 she participated in the International Writers Residency at the University of Iowa.
Her work has been translated into Spanish, Italian and Dutch. In 2014, her first collection was published in the Dutch translation God’s Deceit, and in 2019 Neem this body (translated by Nisrine Mbarki).
Last October, Fatena visited her family in Gaza for the first time in fifteen years. When all hell broke loose shortly afterwards, she did not want to leave her elderly parents behind. Under a rain of Israeli bombs, they fled in haste, her mother barefoot, to Al-Quds hospital. That became their hiding place.
In a few weeks Fatena’s letter book Exodus to Gaza will be published. Letters to Lamar from Al-Quds Hospital, a co-production of EPO and Uitgeverij Jurgen Maas, and translated by Lore Baeten.