Bushra al-Maqtari

Bushra al-Maqtari (Arabic: بشرى المقطري; born 1979) is a Yemeni writer and activist. She came to prominence as an anti-government protest leader in her hometown of Taiz during the 2011 Yemeni Revolution. As a writer, she is best known for her 2012 novel Behind the Sun and her 2018 nonfiction work What You Have Left Behind: Voices from the Land of the Forgotten War.

Bushra al-Maqtari was born in 1979 in Taiz, Yemen.^[1][2] She spent some of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, where her father worked in construction.^[3][4][5] They were forced to leave in 1990, when a million Yemenis were expelled amid tensions between the two countries.^[3]

Maqtari studied history at Taiz University, graduating with a bachelor's degree.^[2][6]

Maqtari is known for her work as a writer and activist. Her writing often focuses on the Yemeni Revolution and leftist politics in Yemen.^[6] She is considered a rare progressive, female voice in Yemen's conservative society.^[3] In response to her work, Yemeni clerics issued a fatwa against her and called for her to be excommunicated in January 2012.^[3][7][8] Protesters issued online threats against her and marched on her home.^[7]

Maqtari published her first book, the prose collection The Furthest Reaches of Pain, in 2003.^[1] She has written for both Arabic and English-language publications including The New Arab and the New York Times.^[1][3][6] In 2011, while covering a protest as a freelance reporter for the Mareb Press, she was injured by a grenade.^[9]

In 2011, she became a leader in anti-government protests during the Yemeni Revolution.^[3][10] The New York Times described her as "one of the first and most fearless leaders of the movement."^[11] Notably, she helped lead a protest march known as the "March for Life" from Taiz to Sanaa.^[2][3]

She published her first novel, Behind the Sun, in 2012.^[1][6] The book focuses on forced disappearances in Yemen.^[3][4] The following year, she was chosen as a participant in the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Nadwa,^[1][5][12] and was given the Françoise Giroud Award for Defense of Freedom and Liberties.^[6][13]

Her next book was 2015's South Yemen Under the Left, co-written with Fawwaz Traboulsi, which details the history of the Yemeni Socialist Party.^{[3][6][13][14]} This was followed in 2018 by her book What You Have Left Behind: Voices from the Land of the Forgotten War, described as an "impassioned raw account of the displaced, widowed and orphaned survivors of Yemen's war."^[3][6] The nonfiction work, which tells the stories of 43 different families, is based on her reporting across the country during the Yemeni Civil War.^[4][13] It was published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions,^[15] with a translation by Sawad Hussain that won a PEN Translates award and was shortlisted for the 2023 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.^[16][17][18]

In 2020, she was awarded the Johann Philipp Palm Award for Freedom of Speech and the Press, in honor of her work as an activist in Yemen.^[6][13][19]

As an academic, Maqtari worked at Taiz University^[11] and founded a historical research center in the city.^[2] She later became a researcher at the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies.^[6] She has served on the executive board of the Yemeni Writers Union [ar]^[1][5] and as a member of the Central Committee of the Yemeni Socialist Party.^[2]

She continues to live and work in Yemen, despite offers for her to emigrate to France and Sweden.^[3]

Maqtari's first marriage ended in divorce.^[11] She later married Sadeq Ali Ghanem.^[13]

• Excerpt from Bushra al-Maqtari's book "What you have left behind", translated to English by Sawad Hussain
• Interview with translator Sawad Hussain about translating trauma on ArabLit magazine