With the 18th edition of the Emirates Literature Festival underway in Dubai, the city has once again turned into a meeting point for writers, readers and stories from across the world. Amid this literary whirlwind, I sat down with Shereen Malherbe, a British-Palestinian author, to discuss her latest book, her Palestinian roots and how her work serves as a luminous bridge between cultures.
- Mariam Khawer
- January 23, 2026
- Zenith UAE, Zenith Voices
For Shereen Malherbe, writing is not merely a creative pursuit, it is an exercise in ethical storytelling. She believes writing about underrepresented communities carries real consequences. Stories do not exist in isolation. They travel worldwide and they influence mindsets. Having spent the last decade refining a literary lens that is uplifting and healing, she approaches storytelling with a deep sense of intention, shaped by personal history, experience and a profound sense of responsibility to how underrepresented communities are portrayed on the page.
Palestine Beyond the Lens
Growing up in the UK and being raised by a British mother and a Palestinian father, Shereen’s understanding of her heritage came largely from afar. It wasn’t until her twenties that she visited Palestine for the first time. An experience which challenged much of what she thought she knew about the land.
“The Palestine I saw wasn’t like anything I’d imagined or heard about because I think you see Palestine very differently through a British or a global lens. One thing that struck me about the people of Palestine was how they lived their lives. They don’t have much, but they have so much generosity”.
This revelation became the heartbeat of her work. While news headlines often focus on destruction, Shereen’s novels search for the joy, hope and resilience that thrive in the corners of daily life in Palestine.
Rather than going with a storyline already mapped out, Shereen chose to explore Palestine without narrative expectations. She listened, observed, absorbed and only afterwards did she begin to write. It was s a deliberate reversal of the conventional writing process as she believes preconceptions limit what a writer allows themselves to see. By letting the stories emerge from actual encounters, she creates stories that are expansive and honest, born out of experiences that surprise even her.
The Genesis of Yassini Girls
Her most personal journey to date began with an undiscovered family revelation. Years into writing about Palestine, she discovered that her understanding of where her family came from was incomplete. For eight years, Shereen had written about her family’s origins in a specific area, only to learn, upon her grandmother’s passing, that their true history lay elsewhere.
A chance mention of this during a book tour led to an unexpected collaboration with the BBC and eventually to Holy Land and Us, a documentary tracing her lineage with the help of historians and archival access she would never have had otherwise. The filming was raw and unpredictable; the crew provided a blank seven-day schedule, wanting to capture her authentic reactions to archival discoveries on camera.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” she admits.
The ten minutes of footage seen by viewers could not contain the weight of what she uncovered. To give the story its full due, she turned the experience into her latest novel, Yassini Girls, to allow readers access to the intimate details and emotional arc that would otherwise be lost.
The Craft of Connection
Whether writing for adults or younger audiences, Shereen explores universal themes of belonging and identity. These are shaped into simple frameworks for young readers, while writing for adult audiences naturally allows for greater complexity and nuance. The emotional core, however, remains consistent across her body of work.
Talking about the most challenging aspect of writing she mentions the fear of the blank page. The transition from when an idea exists but is yet to spill out and find its footing on paper. Experience has taught her how to move through that fear but she remains acutely aware of how paralysing it can be for new writers. The awareness of the common struggle is what inspired her to develop the Noble Narrative Programme. A storytelling platform that teaches first time novelists how to go from “intention to ink.”
Her advice to emerging writers is to really learn the craft of storytelling. Study structure. Read with intention and understand how stories work and then trusting yourself enough to tell the one only you can.
Through Yassini Girls and her wider body of work, she continues to ensure that the real Palestine, which is vibrant, generous and enduring, is not lost to the shadows of history.
Shereen Malherbe 