Selma Dabbagh

Selma Dabbagh (born 1970) is a British-Palestinian writer and lawyer. Her 2011 debut novel, Out of It was nominated for a Guardian Book of the Year award in 2011 and 2012. Her shorter writings have been published by outlets including International PEN, Granta, The Guardian, London Review of Books and GQ magazine.

Early life and education Born in Dundee, Scotland, Dabbagh is the daughter of a Palestinian father from Jaffa and an English mother. She lived variously in Dundee, Reading, High Wycombe and Jeddah during her early childhood, before moving to Kuwait when she was eight years old.

Dabbagh graduated from Durham University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and later earned an LL.M. from SOAS University of London. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. Before concentrating on writing, she worked as a human rights lawyer in the West Bank; however, she was not able to stay in the occupied territory and moved to Cairo, where she worked at AMIDEAST. She later moved to Bahrain, where she wrote her first novel.

Inspiration Dabbagh is strongly influenced by Palestine, the greater Palestinian diaspora, and her legal work in human rights and international criminal law.

Works Since 2004, she has written short stories that have appeared in New Writing 15 and Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women. She has been a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and twice been a finalist in the Fish Short Story Prize, for "Beirut-Paris-Beirut" (2005) and for "Aubergine" (2004).

Dabbagh's debut novel Out of It was published in 2011, including Kirkus Reviews, ArabLit, Guernica, and The Independent, with Ahdaf Soueif praising the book as "a new and welcome take on the Palestinian story".

In 2014, Dabbagh's radio play The Brick was broadcast by BBC Radio 4, being nominated for an Imison Award.

She edited the anthology We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers, published by Saqi in 2021.