Ru Freeman

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan and American writer, poet, and activist. She is the author of Open Carry: Poems (Trio House Press, 2027), Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship & A Creative Life (Etruscan Press, 2023), Sleeping Alone: Stories (Graywolf Press, 2022), and the widely translated novels A Disobedient Girl (Graywolf, 2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book. She is the editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015) and coeditor of Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Simon & Schuster, 2018). She writes for The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. Recipient of the Mariella Gable Award for Fiction, and the JH Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, she teaches creative writing in the U.S. and abroad. (updated 10/2026)

Read Freeman’s essay, “How Far Are You from Gaza?,” in Dispatches from Palestine.

With Shuchi Saraswat and Preti Taneja, she coedited Proximity: An AGNI Portfolio of Writing and Art by Women of Color.