Penny Johnson

Penny Johnson (b 1947 , Japan), now based in Ramallah, is an author, researcher and founding member of the Institute of Women's Studies at Birzeit University in Palestine. 

With her husband, Raja Shehadeh (also participating in this year’s Bergen International Literary Festival), she edited Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, the recipient of the General Prize in the 2013 Palestine Book Awards. A further collection of essays, Shifting Sands: The Unravelling of the Old Order in the Middle East, followed in 2015.

Her most recent publication, Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine, explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a surprising lens: The animals trying to survive in the occupied territories.