Alum Zein El-Amine's short story collection "Is This How You Eat a Watermelon?" Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Fiction

Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? invites readers into a world where love, war, and trauma collide with the desire to consume life—or be consumed by it.

Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? by Zein El-Amine (MFA, 2010) has been longlisted for the 2023 PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Fiction. Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? won the 2021 Megaphone Prize. The short story collection is available for purchase on the publisher's website: Radix Media.

About the Author:

Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy In Focus, CityLit, and others. His latest poetry manuscript “A Travel Guide for the Exiled” was recently shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. His short stories have appeared in the Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and in Bound Off.