Syrian writer, journalist, and poet Manahel Alsahoui is Prague’s first ICORN resident
In September 2025, Prague welcomed the Syrian writer, poet, and journalist Manahel Alsahoui as the city’s first ICORN resident. Since then, Alsahoui has continued her work, taking part in several literary events, including the Prague Poetry Day Festival and the Nad Prahou Půlměsíc Festival of Middle Eastern cultures.
Alsahoui began her literary career at a young age, while her work in journalism started in 2014, covering a broad range of topics including culture, women’s issues, and human rights.
As a literary writer, Alsahoui published a poetry collection titled Thirty Minutes on a Booby-Trapped Bus (2018), which received the Italian Tulliola Award in the Arabic Poetry category, as well as the collection Untouched Within (2024). In fiction, she won the Khaled Khalifa Award for her debut novel The Praying Mantis Female (2025). She has also written a play titled Battery for a Hand Lamp which won the 2017 Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity, and her work has appeared in the anthology How Many Lungs for the Coast: New Writings from the Arab World (2020). Her poetry is included in two additional anthologies: Flap of My Heart Wing (2017), a collection of feminist poems translated into German, and Portrait of Death (2015).
In journalism, Alsahoui worked for four years as the Syria File Editor at Daraj. Since 2024, she has been the editor of the Arabic section at Medfeminiswiya, a trilingual platform focused on women’s issues in the Mediterranean region. She also continues to work as a freelance journalist for several outlets.
Examples of her journalistic work include: “I Am a Syrian Journalist, Writing under a Pseudonym: If Ever I Disappear, Call This Number” (2021); “Words More Naked Than Flesh: On Poetry and the Body in Times of War” (2025); and her contribution to the investigative report “The Captagon Republic: How the Vast Drug-Smuggling Network Is Connected to the Presidential Palace in Syria” (2023).
Alsahoui has also worked as a content producer.
Because of her work, its themes, and the platforms with which she collaborated, Alsahoui was targeted several timesby Syrian authorities. She fled to Lebanon, where she continued to face threats and harassment from individuals linked to the Assad regime.
Prague ICORN City of Refuge
Building on a rich history of resistance, championing free expression, and a long literary tradition, Prague joined ICORN in March 2024. It is the first and only ICORN City of Refuge in the Czech Republic.
