Edward Salem

Edward Salem’s second poetry collection, Intifadas (Sarabande Books, 2026), was selected for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. He is also the author of Monk Fruit (Nightboat Books, 2025). Salem’s fiction won the 2022 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and BOMB’s 2021 Fiction Contest. His writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. 

Born in Detroit to Palestinian parents, he was formerly an artist working in performance, street interventions, and experimental film. His work has been exhibited at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, The Hangar in Beirut, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and many other venues.

He is the cofounder of City of Asylum/Detroit, a nonprofit that provides safe-haven fellowships to writers and artists in exile who have been persecuted for their work.