Abdelrahman ElGendy is an Egyptian writer and activist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a six-year political prisoner in Egypt between 2013 and 2020. Arrested at 17 and released at 24, Abdelrahman started and earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Ain Shams University while in prison.  

 

Abdelrahman is a Dietrich fellow at the University of Pittsburgh's Nonfiction Writing MFA, a Heinz fellow at Pitt's Global Studies Center, a 2023 Tin House Scholar, an awardee of the 2023 Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Nonfiction at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a 2021 Logan Nonfiction fellow, and a finalist for the 2021 and 2023 Margolis Award for Social Justice Journalism.

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His writing appears in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, New Lines Magazine, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), Mada Masr, Raseef 22, AlManassa, and elsewhere.  

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Abdelrahman's work is engaged with artistic counter-narratives of history as a form of resistance to erasure and cultural genocide. 

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He is represented by Jin Auh of the Wylie Agency.