Ru Freeman

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan and American writer, poet, and activist. She is the author of Open Carry: Poems (forthcoming from 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 On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book, and A Disobedient Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2009). She is the editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine (O/R Books, 2015; Interlink, 2016) and coeditor of Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Interlink, 2018). Her writing appears internationally including in the The UK Guardian, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. A 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.