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, and a Heinz fellow at Pitt's Global Studies Center. His work has received awards or fellowships from Logan Nonfiction Program, Tin House Workshop, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is the winner of the 2024 Turow-Kinder Award in Fiction, the 2024 Courage to Write Award by the de Groot Foundation, and was 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, Guernica, AGNI, Mizna, The Markaz Review, Truthout, Mada Masr, and elsewhere.  

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Abdelrahman's work is engaged with historical erasure and speaking into state-manufactured archival silences as they are created in real time. 

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He is represented by Jin Auh of the Wylie Agency.