Isabella Hammad

Isabella Mariam S. Hammad (born 1990/91) is a British-Palestinian author.^[2] In 2023, she was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.

Isabella Hammad
Born	1990/91[1] Hammersmith, London, England
Alma mater	University of Oxford New York University
Years active	2019–present
Notable work	The Parisian (2019); Enter Ghost (2023)

Biography

Hammad grew up in Acton, West London.^[3][4][5] Her Palestinian father, whose family were from Nablus, had previously lived in Lebanon.^[6] Hammad studied English at the University of Oxford.^[7] After undertaking a literature fellowship at Harvard University, she went on to complete a creative writing MFA at New York University.^[8]

Awards and honours

In 2019, Hammad was a National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honoree.^[4][9][10] The same year, The New York Times named her debut novel, The Parisian, one of the Notable Books of the year,^[11] and The Guardian included Hammad on their list of the year's "writers of exceptional first novels".^[8]

The Guardian described her second book, Enter Ghost, as being "a story of Palestine, driven by questions of identity and belonging."^[12] It was shortlisted for the 2024 Encore Award, given by the Royal Society of Literature to celebrate the "difficult second novel" that follows an author's literary debut,^[13] going on to be chosen as the winner.^[14]

In 2020, Hammad received a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship,^[11] and in 2023, she was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, compiled every 10 years since 1983, identifying the 20 most significant British novelists aged under 40.^[15][16]

She has also received a Gerald Freund Fellowship from MacDowell and an Axinn Foundation Fellowship from New York University.^[11] She was a speaker at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival^[17] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 22 September 2023. She delivered the Edward Said Memorial Lecture, entitled "Recognizing the Stranger", at Columbia University at the end of September 2023.^[18]

She was elected a 2024–2025 Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.^[19]

Awards for Hammad's writing

Year	Title	Award	Result	Ref.
2018	“Mr. Can’aan”	Plimpton Prize for Fiction	Won	[4]
2019		O. Henry Prize for Short Story	Won	[4]
	The Parisian	Palestine Book Award	Won	[20][8]
2020		Betty Trask Award	Won	[11]
		Chautauqua Prize	Shortlisted	[21]
		Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction	Won	[20][22]
		Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction	Shortlisted	[23]
2024	Enter Ghost	Aspen Words Literary Prize	Won	[24]
		Royal Society of Literature Encore Award	Won	[25]

Books

• The Parisian (Jonathan Cape, December 2019)^{[26][27][28][29]}
• Enter Ghost (Grove Press, April 2023)^[30][31]
• Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (Grove Press, September 2024)