DUBAI: Renowned Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha won the Pulitzer Prize in commentary for his published essays documenting the suffering of people in Gaza.
Abu Toha was awarded the $15,000 award for four of his essays published in The New Yorker “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel,” the Pulitzer board said.
Announcing his win, Abu Toha wrote on X: “Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.”
The writer, who was born in a refugee camp in Gaza City, lost 31 family members in an airstrike on their home on Oct. 28, 2023 amid the war in Gaza.
He was detained by Israeli forces in November 2023 while trying to flee his home in northern Gaza, where he lived most of his life and was wounded aged 16 by an Israeli airstrike.
Abu Toha, along with his wife and three children, are now based in the US, where he received a Harvard fellowship for scholars at risk in 2019.
In a tribute post on Tuesday following his Pulitzer prize win, Abu Toha wrote on X: “Blessings to the 31 members of my family who were killed in one airstrike in 2023.
“Blessings to the soul of my great aunt, Fatima, whose ‘corpse’ remains under the rubble of her house since October 2024. Blessings to the graves of my grandparents who I will never find.”
