Ru Freeman

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan born writer and activist whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Gardian, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is the author of Bon Courage: Essays (Etruscan Press, 2023); the short story collection Sleeping Alone (Graywolf Press, 2022); and the novels On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press, 2013), a NYT Editor's Choice Book, and A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009). She is also editor of the anthology Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015 and Interlink, 2016), a collection of the voices of 65 American poets and writers speaking about America’s dis/engagement with Palestine, and Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Interlink, 2019).

She holds a graduate degree in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, in the South Asia office of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), and the American Friends Service Committee in their humanitarian and disaster relief programs. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

A 2014 winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, Freeman teaches creative writing internationally and directs the artist network at Narrative 4.