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Bushra al-Maqtari (Arabic: بشرى المقطري; born 1979) is a Yemeni writer and activist. She came to prominence as an anti-government protest leader in her hometown of Taiz during the 2011 Yemeni Revolution. As a writer, she is best known for her 2012 novel Behind the Sun and her 2018 nonfiction work What You Have Left Behind: Voices from the Land of the Forgotten War.
Bushra al-Maqtari was born in 1979 in Taiz, Yemen.[1][2] She spent some of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, where her father worked in construction.[3][4][5] They were forced to leave in 1990, when a million Yemenis were expelled amid tensions between the two countries.[3]
Maqtari studied history at Taiz University, graduating with a bachelor's degree.[2][6]
Maqtari is known for her work as a writer and activist. Her writing often focuses on the Yemeni Revolution and leftist politics in Yemen.[6] She is considered a rare progressive, female voice in Yemen's conservative society.[3] In response to her work, Yemeni clerics issued a fatwa against her and called for her to be excommunicated in January 2012.[3][7][8] Protesters issued online threats against her and marched on her home.[7]
Maqtari published her first book, the prose collection The Furthest Reaches of Pain, in 2003.[1] She has written for both Arabic and English-language publications including The New Arab and the New York Times.[1][3][6] In 2011, while covering a protest as a freelance reporter for the Mareb Press, she was injured by a grenade.[9]
In 2011, she became a leader in anti-government protests during the Yemeni Revolution.[3][10] The New York Times described her as "one of the first and most fearless leaders of the movement."[11] Notably, she helped lead a protest march known as the "March for Life" from Taiz to Sanaa.[2][3]
She published her first novel, Behind the Sun, in 2012.[1][6] The book focuses on forced disappearances in Yemen.[3][4] The following year, she was chosen as a participant in the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Nadwa,[1][5][12] and was given the Françoise Giroud Award for Defense of Freedom and Liberties.[6][13]
Her next book was 2015's South Yemen Under the Left, co-written with Fawwaz Traboulsi, which details the history of the Yemeni Socialist Party.[3][6][13][14] This was followed in 2018 by her book What You Have Left Behind: Voices from the Land of the Forgotten War, described as an "impassioned raw account of the displaced, widowed and orphaned survivors of Yemen's war."[3][6] The nonfiction work, which tells the stories of 43 different families, is based on her reporting across the country during the Yemeni Civil War.[4][13] It was published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions,[15] with a translation by Sawad Hussain that won a PEN Translates award and was shortlisted for the 2023 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.[16][17][18]
In 2020, she was awarded the Johann Philipp Palm Award for Freedom of Speech and the Press, in honor of her work as an activist in Yemen.[6][13][19]
As an academic, Maqtari worked at Taiz University[11] and founded a historical research center in the city.[2] She later became a researcher at the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies.[6] She has served on the executive board of the Yemeni Writers Union[1][5] and as a member of the Central Committee of the Yemeni Socialist Party.[2]
She continues to live and work in Yemen, despite offers for her to emigrate to France and Sweden.[3]
Maqtari's first marriage ended in divorce.[11] She later married Sadeq Ali Ghanem.[13]
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