Marwa Helal is a poet and journalist. She is the author of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), the chapbook I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No Dear, 2017) and a Belladonna chaplet (2021). She has been awarded fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, New York Foundation of the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Poets House, and Cave Canem, among others.
Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest, selected by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, Boston Review, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018. She has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and internationally in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Athens, Greece.
Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, she currently lives in the United States, and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School and her BA in journalism and international studies from Ohio Wesleyan University.