Ru Freeman is an award-winning Sri Lankan and American poet, writer, and critic, whose work appears internationally. She is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf, 2013), a New York Times Editor's Choice, both appearing in translation, and editor of Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015), and Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Interlink, 2018). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Narrative,The Normal School, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University.