Yousri Alghoul

*1980 in Gaza, lives and works in Morges, Switzerland

Résidence period : 2026-2028

Novelist & Fiction Writer

Research Associate, IMD

Yousri Alghoul is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and cultural activist from Gaza city. His writing grows out of lived experience and stays close to the human details that history often overlooks fear, resilience, memory and the struggle to hold on to dignity during the war on Gaza. Across his fictional and non-fictional materials, he writes about lives shaped by assassination and displacement, while insisting on the power of storytelling as a form of witness, resistance and connection.

He is the author of three novels and six short story collections, including Women of Lace, Clothes That Miraculously Survived, The Dead Resurrected from Gaza, The Gallows of Darkness and John F. Kennedy Sometimes Hallucinates. His work has appeared in international literary and cultural platforms, including World Literature Today, The Point, Michigan Quarterly Review, ArabLit, and the Institute for Palestine Studies.

Beyond his writing, Alghoul has long been engaged in cultural work and community-building. He created Cordoba Cultural Initiative, Shaghaf Youth Initiative and he was the founding curator of Gaza Hub- GSC, part of the Global Shapers Community, a youth initiative of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He is also a member of the Palestinian Writers’ Union.

Recently, he moved with his family to Switzerland, where he works as a Research Associate at IMD, focusing on resilience. His research and literary work speak to one another: both are concerned with how people continue, adapt, and preserve meaning under extreme pressure.

At the heart of Alghoul’s work is a belief that literature is not separate from life. For him, writing is a way to protect memory from erasure, to make space for silenced voices, and to carry Gaza’s stories across borders.