Palestinian poet and writer Mosab Abu Toha has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his essays in The New Yorker.
His writing, shaped by life under siege in Gaza, documents the daily horrors faced by Palestinians through a voice that is both personal and poetic.Though the prize is one of journalisms highest honors, Abu Toha said he cannot celebrate while his loved ones remain trapped and starving.
His win, however, marks a powerful moment of recognition for the Palestinian narrative, Scoop Empire reported.Abu Toha was born and raised in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
His life has been marked by repeated assaults on the strip, exile, and the loss of dozens of relatives and friends.When he was just 16, he survived an airstrike but not unscathed.
In the years that followed, he turned to literature as a way to process trauma and preserve memory, becoming one of Gazas most prominent literary voices.In 2017, he founded the Edward Said Library, Gazas first English-language library, to offer young people access to global literature.
It quickly became a cultural lifeline for many.That library was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in January 2024, another chapter in the ongoing erasure of culture and memory that Abu Toha documents so vividly in his work.In 2023, Abu Toha attempted to flee Gaza with his wife and three children.
At an Israeli checkpoint, he was abducted, separated from his family, beaten, and interrogated.He was only released after pressure from friends and supporters abroad.
It was the most traumatizing experience of my life, he later said.
He eventually made it to the U.S., but his familys safety and well-being remain a constant worry.Abu Tohas award-winning essays, published in The New Yorker in 2024, blend memoir and reporting to portray the physical and emotional toll of the genocide in Gaza..
This article first appeared/also appeared in Tehran Times