Yahia Lababidi began writing aphorisms as a teenager in Egypt thirty years ago. Today, he is an internationally published aphorist, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in such publications as World Literature Today, Cimarron Review, AGNI, Rain Taxi, Philosophy Now, and The Best American Poetry. His latest book is a collection of poems for Palestine entitled Palestine Wail (Daraja Press, 2024). Poems from the collection have been translated into Arabic, French, Malayalam, Gaeilge, Spanish, and into Dutch by the poet laureate of the Netherlands, Babs Gons. During the seven days of the annual global publishing event #ReadPalestineWeek, 3,351 e-copies of Palestine Wail were downloaded directly from the publisher.
Earlier, Lababidi released Quarantine Notes (Fomite Press, 2023), a collection of his short meditations on morality and mortality; Desert Songs (Rowayat, 2022), a love letter to Egypt's deserts that features Arabic translations by Syrian poet Osama Esber and images by Moroccan photographer Zakaria Wakrim; and Learning to Pray: A Book of Longing (Kelsay Books, 2021). Lababidi is also the author of two books of aphorisms, Signposts to Elsewhere (Jane Street Press, 2019) and Where Epics Fail (Unbound, 2018). Featured on PBS NewsHour, he has spoken at Oxford University and on NPR, and his cultural essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, Krista Tippett's On Being Project, and Al Jazeera.
Lababidi’s work has appeared in several anthologies, including the bestselling Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing (Pearson), Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists (Bloomsbury), and the first anthology of contemporary American aphorists, Short Flights: Thirty-Two Modern Writers Share Aphorisms of Insight, Inspiration, and Wit (Schaffner Press). (updated 1/2025)
Read Alex Stein‘s “The Prayer of Attention: A Conversation with Yahia Lababidi,” an AGNI Online interview excerpted in Harper’s Magazine’s “Links” for April 21, 2010.
A second interview appears in AGNI 74, Alex Stein‘s “The Exquisites: A Conversation with Yahia Lababidi.”