Mai Serhan is a writer, editor and translator. She holds a BA in English & Comparative Literature and MA in Arabic Studies from the American University in Cairo, and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.
She is the author of the poetry collection, CAIRO: the undelivered letters, forthcoming with Diwan Publishing, the memoir, I Can Imagine it For Us, forthcoming with AUC Press, and the translator of, This is What Has Come to Be, a collection of Sayyed Darwish’s song lyrics, published by the American University in Cairo (2018).
Her writing has appeared in The London Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Oxford Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Anomaly, Oyster River Pages, The Writers & Readers, Refuge, Rusted Radishes, Narratively, Discontent, The Vanity Papers, Jadaliyya, The Journal of Palestine Studies, Fikra, and Arablit Quarterly. It has also received support from Winter Tangerine, Poet’s House, Poets & Writers, The Palestine Museum US, Millay Arts, AWP, and Vermont Studio Center.
Her short story, Tamima, won her the 2017 Madalyn Lamont Literary Award and the 2019 Emerging Writer Award from Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, California; the poem, Truce, was a winner of the 2021 Lunch Ticket Twitter Poetry Contest; the flash memoir, The Place Where I’m From, was long-listed for the 2019 Memoir Prize Award by Fish Publishing in the UK; the short story, Blind Spot, was shortlisted for the 2021 Oxford-BNU Award; the poetry chapbook, Cairo: the undelivered letters, won her the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Prize and was short-listed for the Quarterly West Chapbook Award; and an excerpt from, I Can Imagine It For Us, was a finalist for the 2022 Narratively Memoir Prize. Mai is also the recipient of the 2021 Master’s in Creative Writing FH Pasby Prize from the University of Oxford.