Narratives of the Exiled: Abdelrahman El Gendy

Abdelrahman ElGendy is a writer and former Egyptian political prisoner. Arrested from a protest in Cairo, he spent six years and three months behind bars between October 6, 2013, and January 13, 2020. Incarcerated at 17 and released at 24, he started and earned a mechanical engineering BSc from Ain Shams University in Egypt while in prison. His smuggled prison writings circulated online until picked up and published in 2018 by Mada Masr, an independent journalism platform in Egypt.
Since his release, he has turned to writing and advocacy work. His vision as a dissident writer has been to utilize counter-narratives of the marginalized and oppressed as a form of resistance to state propaganda, with a focus on advocating for the release of Egyptian political prisoners. ElGendy currently pursues an MFA in Creative Writing, nonfiction track, at the University of Pittsburgh, working on a book project that explores the topic of political incarceration and the visceral experiences prisoners undergo in prison through his personal narratives about the world behind bars. He aims to stir a powerful enough conversation to impact the political situation in Egypt, and create a documentation that serves as a testimony and reference for this period in Egyptian history.

ElGendy’s writing is featured on Mada Masr, Raseef 22, Daraj Media, AlManassa, Newlines Magazine and the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy; and was a Logan Nonfiction 2021 fellow as a dissident writer. He is also the head writer and editor of the Leading Change Network NGO. He has been featured in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/world/middleeast/abdelrahman-elgendy-...

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