Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian American writer and the author of the novel You Exist Too Much, which won a 2021 Lambda Literary Award and was named Roxane Gay’s favorite book of the year. Her essay collection, “Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope,” is forthcoming from Hachette/Little, Brown in Fall 2026. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, The Believer, Guernica, and Vice. She teaches writing at Barnard College and lives with her family in New York.
