Ashour published the Arabic-language poetry collection
You Are a Window, They Are Clouds in 2018. His children's book ''That's Why Rayan Walks This Way'' won a 2022 Arab Children's Books Publishers Forum Award. His poems have appeared in Arabic and in translation.
Al-Araby Al-Jadeed published several of his Arabic poems and prose pieces between 2020 and 2023, and
Michigan Quarterly Review published his poem "To-Do Lists" in 2024. His poem "When a Missile Lands", translated by Khaled Rajeh, was published by
ArabLit in 2024 and later appeared in
Letters from Gaza (
Penguin Random House SEA, 2025). Ashour's work has been included in anthologies of Palestinian writing and poetry, including
Anthologie de la poésie palestinienne d’aujourd’hui,
Heaven Looks Like Us, and
You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine.
The Markaz Review discussed his poem "Scale of Catastrophe" in a review of
You Must Live.
Displacement and work in the United States In 2022, Ashour was a Fall Residency participant at the
International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He returned to the United States in September 2023 for the
Palestine Writes Festival.
Publishers Weekly reported that Ashour was in the U.S. on October 7, 2023, and was unable to return to Gaza;
Copper Canyon Press later described him as having been stranded in Michigan when the Gaza war began. The
Detroit Free Press reported that he was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in October 2024, and that his home in
Gaza City was destroyed on October 12, 2023.
Mizna published
A Gaza of Siege & Genocide in March 2024 and provided a fellowship to support Ashour. The
Institute for Palestine Studies interviewed Ashour about the book, Arabic literary tradition, and writing while unable to return to Gaza, and
The Harvard Crimson profiled him later that year. In 2025, Ashour was
UCLA's Marcia H. Howard Author in Residence and, since 2024, he is a visiting assistant professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. In January 2026, he appeared at the University of Southern California in conversation with
Viet Thanh Nguyen. == Selected works ==