Intifadas

Winner of 2024 Sarabande 2024 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Top 10 Poetry collections for Spring 2026, Edward Salem's Intifadas is a subversive collection about Palestinian resistance, liberation and art

Written across Palestine and its diaspora--from Gaza and the West Bank to the United States--Intifadas is a subtly transgressive poetry collection about uprising in its many forms--in art, politics, and in our most personal relationships. Whether by dumping black paint on a park where a tank and fighter jet commemorate a war, or by trying to rescue a moth trapped in a garage, the defiant and resilient voices in this collection subvert traditional narratives of loss. Furious, tender, and darkly funny, Intifadas asks what art can do in the face of catastrophe, and answers with poems that refuse easy consolations.

Edward Salem is the author of Monk Fruit (Nightboat, 2025) and Intifadas (Sarabande, 2026), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, selected by Hanif Abdurraqib, and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His fiction can be found in Granta and BOMB. Born in Detroit to Palestinian parents, he was an artist throughout his thirties, working in performance, street interventions, and experimental film. His work has been exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, The Hangar in Beirut, and many other venues. He currently resides in Detroit and is the founding co-director of City of Asylum/Detroit.