Zaina Arafat author biography, plus links to books by Zaina Arafat.

Zaina Arafat

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 work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Granta, Guernica, Harper's Bazaar, The Believer, Vice and BuzzFeed. She has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation and Jack Jones Literary Arts, and was named a Champion of Pride by The Advocate. She is a professor at Hunter College and also teaches at Barnard College. She lives with her family in New York.

This biography was last updated on 10/20/2026.

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