Abdelrahman ElGendy is an Egyptian writer and translator from Cairo based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Huna, a memoir exploring the politics of dissent and erasure through the lens of his six-year political incarceration in Egypt, forthcoming from Hogarth, Penguin Random House.

 

While in prison between 2013 and 2020, Abdelrahman started and earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Ain Shams University.​

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Abdelrahman's work appears in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Nation, Guernica, AGNI, Mizna, and elsewhere. His poetry and prose translations from Arabic appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, The Margins, and elsewhere. Abdelrahman's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, Best of the Net, and Best Literary Translations.

 

A Samir Kassir Freedom of Press Award winner, Abdelrahman is a 2024-25 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. His work has received awards or fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the de Groot Foundation, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Arab American National Museum, Tin House Writers' Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Sewanee Writers' Conference. He was a finalist for the 2021 and 2023 Margolis Award for Social Justice Journalism.​

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Abdelrahman is represented by Jin Auh of the Wylie Agency.