Bio:

Layla AlAmmar is a writer and academic from Kuwait. She has a PhD in Arab women's fiction and literary trauma theory and an MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her short stories have appeared in the Evening Standard, Quail Bell Magazine, the St Andrews University Prose Journal, and Aesthetica Magazine, where her story "The Lagoon" was a finalist for the 2014 Creative Writing Award. She was the 2018 British Council International Writer in Residence at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival. Her debut, THE PACT WE MADE, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel, SILENCE IS A SENSE (2021) was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She has written for The Guardian, LitHub, the Times Literary Supplement, ArabLit Quarterly, The New Arab, GQ Middle East, and The Markaz Review.