Suleika Jaouad

Suleika Jaouad (/suːˈlaɪkə dʒəˈwɑːd/ soo-LYE-kə jə-WAHD; Arabic: سليكة جواد‎) is an American writer, advocate, and motivational speaker. She is the author of the ‘Life, Interrupted’ column in the New York Times and has also written for Vogue, Glamour, NPR’s All Things Considered and Women’s Health.

Jaouad was born in New York City to a Tunisian father and a Swiss mother. In 2010, she graduated from Princeton University where she majored in Near Eastern Studies and double minored in Gender Studies and French. During her time at Princeton, Jaouad worked on various human rights campaigns for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Oxfam and the African Union. She studied abroad in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt where she researched and wrote about women’s issues.

Jaouad’s career aspirations as a foreign correspondent were cut short when, at age 22, less than a year after graduation, she was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia. After three years of chemotherapy, a clinical trial and a bone marrow transplant, she is now in remission. She began writing her New York Times column from the bone marrow transplant unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

She travels around the US teaching writing and wellness workshops and she speaks at high schools, universities, hospitals, corporations, fund-raisers and professional events. Jaouad has been featured on NPR's Talk of The Nation, NBC's Weekend Today Show, CBS News, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times and Darling Magazine, among others.

Her first TED Talk titled "What almost dying taught me about living" was released in June 2019.

Jaouad's first book, Between Two Kingdoms, will be published in February 2021.

Suleika lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner Jon Batiste and her rescue dog Oscar.

• Between Two Kingdoms (2020)