Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah will headline the 2026 Neustadt Lit Fest at the University of Oklahoma, where he will be formally presented with the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The festival, scheduled for September 28–30 on the OU Norman campus, will bring Nasrallah together with more than a dozen writers, artists, and scholars for conversations and presentations on Palestinian literature and culture, as well as Middle Eastern history and politics. Nasrallah will receive the $50,000 prize, a silver Neustadt feather, and a certificate during a ceremony at the university.

Born in Amman in 1954 to Palestinian parents displaced in 1948, Nasrallah grew up in the Al-Wehdat refugee camp and has built a wide-ranging literary and artistic career spanning poetry, fiction, painting, and photography. He has published more than forty works, including sixteen poetry collections and twenty-six novels, with his writing frequently engaging questions of exile, identity, memory, and Palestinian history. His books have been translated into more than fifty languages. He won the Arabic Booker Prize in 2018 for The Second War of the Dog, adding one of the Arab literary world’s major honours to a career that has made him a significant voice in contemporary Arabic literature.

The festival will offer audiences an opportunity to encounter Nasrallah’s work beyond the page. On the final day, he will give a bilingual poetry reading with translator Nancy Roberts, accompanied by oud player Callen Clarke, before delivering a keynote address. The programme is free and open to the public, extending the Neustadt celebration into a wider gathering around Palestinian literature and culture. As Nasrallah prepares to receive the 2026 Neustadt Prize – the 29th laureate in the award’s history – the festival places his long engagement with Palestinian experience at the centre of an international literary conversation.

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