Some writers walk for two hours just to find a phone signal. Others charge their handsets wherever they can, then tap out poems and short stories on cracked screens before sending them to a WhatsApp group in Glasgow.
That is how the work reaches Voices from Gaza, a blog developed by the University of Glasgow and the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) that has, in a matter of months, become a small but striking literary home for more than 30 young Palestinian writers.
A blog built on partnership
The project launched last October as an offshoot of the British Council-funded LINEs for Palestine initiative, pioneered by Dr Nazmi Abdel-Salam Al-Masri, professor of languages and curriculum studies at IUG and an honorary fellow at Glasgow's School of Education.
Glasgow doctoral student Michael Quinn helped develop and curate the blog in its early months, gathering submissions, shaping the monthly themed collections and keeping in contact with contributors through whatever channels they could find.
"Some of the stories of what they go through to get in contact with us are incredible," Quinn said. "There are some who will be walking for an hour or two to get to a point where they can have signal, or even to get to a point where they can charge a phone to then contact us."
The curatorial reins are now being handed to two students at IUG, Genista Azmi and Asala Thaher, with support from Wajd El Khatib, a student based in Glasgow — a deliberate shift that puts editorial control in the hands of the writers' own community.
Poetry, fiction and personal essays
Each themed collection blends short fiction, poetry and narrative essays. The latest, published on 31 March, gathers work around the themes of love, loss and belonging. Some contributors send photographs alongside their writing: student Alaa Khalaf paired her poem Infancy Under Fire with an image of a lantern set before a ruined building, a quiet meditation on the home she lost.
Other recent pieces include Law of the Hungry Sea by Noor Kamal Mosa, a fierce and surreal poem about survival, and Escape by a writer who publishes under the name Haya — a prose account of an eleven-hour wait inside her family's home before they ran for safety.
One contributor put it simply: "I truly believe that the 'Voices from Gaza' project is special to all of us. The result is beautiful, and I am very grateful to be a part of it."
For Quinn, the writing has been striking in its intimacy. "They spoke about specific people in their lives who they'd lost and about how they lost them," he said. "A lot of these students are the same age as my sister. It's easy to look at what's happening and think, 'this doesn't happen to us'. But no, this could be happening to us easily."
What readers can do
The blog's audience so far has been largely Palestinian, and the curatorial team hopes a wider readership in Scotland and beyond will help amplify the writers' work.
"Our hope is that these voices and narratives reach broader audiences, inspire action, and highlight the power and creativity emerging from Gaza, even in these exceedingly difficult times," Quinn said. "While these works explore themes of fear, hurt and darkness, there is also a powerful unifying message of love, hope and optimism."
Readers can follow new collections as they are published on the Voices from Gaza blog, hosted by the University of Glasgow, and on the project's accompanying Instagram page, where extracts and contributor photographs appear alongside each release.
