Fatin Abbas
Fatin Abbas | |
|---|---|
| Born | Khartoum, Sudan |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar, author, academic |
| Years active | –present |
| Known for | Essays and non-fiction works on Sudan; short stories; novel Ghost Season (2023) |
Fatin Abbas () is a Sudanese-American scholar and author. Raised in New York City with academic training in both the United Kingdom and the United States, she is known for her essays and non-fiction works focusing on Sudan, as well as her short stories and her 2023 debut novel, Ghost Season. After obtaining a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, Abbas has taught fiction writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pratt Institute, and Comparative Literature at Bard College Berlin in Germany.
Early life and education
Abbas was born in Khartoum into a middle-class household; her father was an English literature professor. Following the 1989 military takeover by Omar al-Bashir, her father was imprisoned for his political opposition but released after one year. To escape further political repression, the family relocated to the United States in 1990, where her mother secured a position at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Throughout her upbringing, Abbas encountered racial discrimination in New York and experienced cultural contrasts during visits back to Sudan. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Cambridge, a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Hunter College at the City University of New York.
Career as writer and academic
In her capacity as a non-fiction writer, Abbas has contributed essays, critiques, and reports to various international outlets including The Nation, openDemocracy, African Arguments by the Royal African Society, Bidoun magazine, the German edition of Le Monde diplomatique, Die Zeit online, and Kulturaustausch, published by Germany’s ifa - Institute for Foreign Relations. She also reviewed Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Timbuktu for the online publication Africa is a Country.
In a 2015 essay titled "Coming to terms with Sudan's legacy of slavery," Abbas analyzed how slavery has influenced Sudanese identities, emphasizing persistent socioeconomic disparities between northern and southern communities.
Her work has also traced Khartoum’s historical trajectory from the era of the 19th-century Mahdist state through to South Sudan’s independence during Omar al-Bashir’s rule. Additional subjects she has explored include child soldiers and the worldwide spread of small arms.
Abbas's short stories have been featured in literary journals such as Granta, Freeman's, MIT Technology Review, The Warwick Review, and Friction. Her novel Ghost Season (2023) is informed by her NGO experiences within Sudan’s conflict zones and is set in an imagined village affected by civil war.
In academia, Abbas has taught Creative Writing at MIT and Pratt Institute in the United States, as well as Comparative Literature at Bard College Berlin, where she currently lives. Her doctoral dissertation completed at Harvard in 2012 examined themes of class, gender, and indigeneity within African novels by authors including Achebe, Ngugi, Emecheta, Sow Fall, and Ali. In 2014, she authored a literary critique on Egyptian writer Idris Ali that investigated Arab nationalism alongside Nubian diasporic identity. Her research interests encompass African diaspora histories, gender representation in African and Arabic literature, post-colonial nation-building, colonial legacies, and globalization as reflected in African and Middle Eastern literary works and cinema.
Reception
In a review for the New York Times on Ghost Season, British author of Eritrean descent Sulaiman Addonia remarked that Abbas "courageously explored Sudan’s deep-seated wounds and cultural taboos," describing the work as a "powerful narrative and an audacious first novel." Further critiques were published in Sudanese 500 Words Magazine, the New York Journal of Books, the Orange County Register, and Minneapolis' Star Tribune, with the latter commending Abbas for her "meticulous attention to both setting and character development."
Additionally, Ghost Season was recognized by the literary publication Brittle Paper as one of the 100 Noteworthy African Books of 2023.
Works
- Mud Missive. Documentary film, 2009
- "Womb Memories". Short story, featured in The Warwick Review, December 2011
- "The Circumcision". Short story, published by openDemocracy, 2012
- Ghost Season. Novel. Released by W.W. Norton (US & Canada) and Jacaranda (UK), 2023, ISBN 978-1-324-00174-4
Awards and recognition
During her time at City University of New York, Abbas earned the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize along with the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. She has held the status of Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholar in the UK and has been appointed as a Fellow at Germany’s Akademie Schloss Solitude as well as at the Schloss Wiepersdorf cultural foundation. Her residencies include Writer-in-Residence positions at Switzerland’s Jan Michalski Foundation and Maison Baldwin St. Paul de Vence in France, an Artist-in-Residence role supported by the Austrian Federal Chancellery/KulturKontakt, and a Mophradat writing sabbatical award in Belgium.
See also
External links
- Interview with Fatin Abbas discussing themes of belonging, writing, and migration, November 2023
- Mud Missive, documentary by Fatin Abbas about White Nile potters, available on YouTube
- Living people
- 1982 births
- 21st-century Sudanese writers
- Alumni of the University of Cambridge
- Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
- Hunter College alumni
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
- Pratt Institute faculty
- Bard College faculty
- Sudanese emigrants to the United States
- Sudanese novelists
- Sudanese women novelists
- Sudanese women writers
- Writers from Khartoum