Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (born 1975) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, and translator. She cofounded the Institute for Middle East Understanding in 2005.
Tuffaha is the author of three full-length poetry collections and two chapbooks. Letters from the Interior was published in 2019 by Diode Editions. Water & Salt was published by Red Hen Press and won the 2018 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Arab in Newsland was published by Two Sylvias Press and won the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. Kaan and Her Sisters, published by Trio House Press in 2023, was a finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award.
Tuffaha's collection Something About Living won the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize. It was selected for the 2025 American Library Association Notable Books List (Poetry) and shortlisted for the 2025 PEN Heaney Prize. In 2025, Something About Living also won the 2025 Washington State Book Award for Poetry and the George Ellenbogen Poetry Award (Arab American Book Awards).
Tuffaha is the recipient of a 2019 Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship and served as the inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle, Washington. Her writing has appeared in Barrow Street, Hayden's Ferry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, TriQuarterly, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA in poetry from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop. In 2002, she was quoted in The Seattle Times as doing outreach work for the Seattle chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.