An undated photo of Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha (Social media)

Celebrated Palestinian poet and writer Mosab Abu Toha has been named one of this year’s recipients of the Pulitzer Prize.

Abu Toha received the Pulitzer for a powerful series of essays in The New Yorker that chronicle the lives and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza under the Israeli occupation, an experience he intimately understands, having lived there nearly his entire life.

I’m honored to receive the Pulitzer Prize today. Great thanks to the prize’s jury and board members for honoring me.
I dedicate this success to my family, friends, teachers, and students in Gaza.
Blessings to the 31 members of my family who were killed in one air strike in 2023.… pic.twitter.com/Xq7imNdZtX
— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) May 6, 2025

“I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary,” he wrote on X. “Let it bring hope / Let it be a tale.”

According to the Pulitzer board on Monday, his essays illustrated “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.”

A poetic voice from Gaza

In 2023, 32-year-old Abu Toha was detained by Israeli forces at a checkpoint while attempting to escape his home in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, alongside his wife, Maram, and their three young children.

My name is Mosab Abu Toha and here are a few facts that everyone needs to know about me before mentioning my name:
1- I was born in a refugee camp in Gaza City in 1992.
2- I was wounded in January 2009 in an air strike that killed six people. I was 16 years old. Read my poem “The…
— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) April 14, 2025

While in Israeli detention, soldiers “separated me from my family, beat me, and interrogated me,” he recounted. He later managed to leave and find refuge in the US after international friends exerted pressure for his release.

Abu Toha reflected on his family's hardship in securing food in Gaza, contrasting it with memories of ordinary meals shared before the war.

“I yearn to return to Gaza, sit at the kitchen table with my mother and father, and make tea for my sisters. I do not need to eat. I only want to look at them again,” he wrote.

Personal trials and global resonance

Abu Toha reflected on the devastation of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, a place where he had spent time with his grandparents and attended school. “I looked at the photos again and again, and an image of a graveyard that grows and grows formed in my mind,” he wrote.

He also addressed the suspicion and mistreatment Palestinians often endure abroad. Recalling an encounter during a layover in Boston, he described telling a TSA agent who tested his hands for explosives, “I was kidnapped by the Israeli army in November, before being stripped of my clothes … Today, you come and separate me from my wife and kids, just like the army did a few months ago.”

The New Yorker was also honored with a Pulitzer for its investigative podcast uncovering the killing of Iraqi civilians by the US military, as well as for feature photography, recognizing Moises Saman’s work.

In the arts category, this year’s Pulitzer recipients include Percival Everett for James, a novel that reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the viewpoint of the enslaved protagonist, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for Purpose, a play that explores the unraveling of a prominent Black family.

It is worth noting that Mosab Abu Toha's survival and recognition come amid the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 52,500 Palestinians, including scholars, writers, and artists.