Sari Bashi is an Israeli-American writer, blogger, human rights lawyer and strategic consultant, married to a Palestinian professor who grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza. She’s the author of the book Upside-Down Love (Maqluba), published in Hebrew and translated into Italian, Dutch and English, which describes how she and Osama met and fell in love. In her blog, she writes about raising their two children in the West Bank. She has changed the names of people in her book and blog to protect their privacy, and during her first years of blogging she wrote under the pen name “Umm Forat,” which means “Mother of Forat” in Arabic.
Sari is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a human rights organization protecting Palestinian detainees and others at risk of being subjected to torture and mistreatment. She is the co-founder and former executive director of Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, the Israeli human rights organization promoting freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza. She previously served as program director for Human Rights Watch, leading the organization’s global research and research staff of 270 people and as research director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, where she’s currently a fellow. She’s an expert in international humanitarian law, a subject she has taught at Tel Aviv University and Yale Law School.
Sari’s essays appear in the New York Times, MSNBC, Foreign Policy, the New York Review of Books and other publications. She received her B.A. from Yale College and her J.D. from Yale Law School and was a Fulbright scholar.
Sari is a marathon and ultra-marathon runner and really, really loves freedom of movement.
You can learn more about Upside-Down Love here, and read reviews here.
In the United States, Sari’s literary agent is
the Andy Ross Agency:
767 Santa Ray Avenue
Oakland, Ca. 94610
510-238-8965