Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, ’08, wins her second Washington State Book Award
Tuffaha recently won the National Book Award for her poetry. This is her second Washington State Book Award.
Lena Tuffaha accepts the National Book Award for Poetry at the 2024 National Book Awards ceremony in New York. Photo by Jennifer Lee.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, who studied comparative literature at the UW, has won the 2025 Washington State Book Award for her poetry collection “Something about Living.” The poems, which meditate on genocide, cultural loss and resilience, draw from her Palestinian and American backgrounds.
Tuffaha was recently profiled in UW Magazine following her National Book Award in 2024 for “Something About Living.” Her first Washington State Book Award was in 2018 for her collection “Water & Salt.”
The Washington State Book Awards are a project of the Washington State Center for the Book and honor works of outstanding literary merit by Washington authors. A panel of judges made up of booksellers, authors and librarians determine the finalists and winners based on the strength of the publication’s literary merit, lasting importance and overall quality. The judges prioritize exemplary works by authors from historically marginalized and excluded communities. Finalists in this year’s poetry category include Martha Silano, ’93, for her book “This One We Call Ours.”