Photo Credit:
Photo credit
Nicole Périat
Leila Marshy
BIO
Biography

Leila Marshy is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee who went and married a Newfoundlander. She lived in Cairo before, during and after the First Intifada and worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent and Medical Aid for Palestine. In Montreal, she has been a filmmaker, an app designer, a marketer, a baker and a chicken farmer. In 2011, she founded a ground-breaking community group bringing Hasidic and non-Hasidic neighbours together in dialogue, and was campaign manager for the first Hasidic woman to hold office in the world.

Her first novel The Philistine (LLP, 2018) was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and is currently in development for a feature film. In 2025 she edited the anthology Razing Palestine: Punishing Solidarity and Dissent in Canada (Baraka Books) with a Foreword by Gabor Maté. Also published in 2025 by Baraka Books, her first collection of stories, My Thievery of the People, was short listed in 2025 for the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Literary Award for Fiction and in 2026 won the Writers Trust Danuta Gleed Literary Award. She is Editor at Baraka Books and lives in Montreal.

ADDRESS
City: Montreal, Province/Territory: _none
EMAIL
LINKS
Links
HaikuBoxer
PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS
EQUITY INITIATIVE
As part of the Union’s Equity Implementation Plan, we are committed to increasing awareness of authors who are Black, Indigenous, racialized, LGBTQI2S, or living with a disability. This author identifies as:
Members who identify as:
LGBTQI2S
Programs & Interests
Interested in participating Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program:
All members are eligible for the Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program. Are you interested in participating in this pro
Yes
Interested in participating in the Northern Ontario WITS program:
The Union’s Northern Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program funds in-person visits to northern Ontario schools when possible. Ar
Yes