Hila Amit

Dr. Hila Amit is an award-winning author. She was born in Israel in 1985 to a Jewish family with Iranian and Syrian ethnic origins. She studied creative writing at Tel Aviv University and holds a PhD in the field of Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London. Her first fiction book, Moving On From Bliss (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2016), was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize for Debut Authors, and was recently selected to one of the 10 best literary works in Hebrew for the years 2010-2020. Her fiction appeared in Lilith, Jalta, Emrys Journal & The Washington Square Review. Her story, “The Kinneret”, was recently selected for the Sue Lile Inman Fiction Prize

Her non-fiction book, A Queer Way Out – The Politics of Queer  Emigration from Israel (Albany: SUNY, 2018) deals with the subject of LGBT Israelis in the diaspora. She was awarded the ECPR Joni Lovenduski Prize for best dissertation in Gender and Politics in 2017, and in 2019 A Queer Way Out awarded the AMEWS (Association of Middle East Women’s Studies) Book Award.

Dr. Amit established the International Hebrew School, through which she aims to advance Hebrew learning using a queer, feministic and pluralistic method. She is the co-founder of “Anu אנו نحن : Jews and Arabs Writing in Berlin”, and is curating literary events which bring together Jews and non-Jews with a Middle Eastern heritage together.

Photo by: Hila Spak