Gabby is a writer based in Portland, Oregon.

The daughter of a French mother and an Egyptian father, her writing is shaped by questions of identity, inheritance, belonging, and the many ways that the past informs the present. Raised within religious schooling and later coming to understand herself as a lesbian, she has long been interested in the interactions and conflicts between faith, sexuality, family, and culture. She writes essays, short stories, poetry, and cultural criticism. Across genres, her writing is informed by the lingering bruises of childhood, the complexities of queer and neurodivergent identity, the anxiety of becoming oneself and a fascination with the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. She is far less interested in certainty and far more interested in contradiction.

For nearly a decade, Gabby has worked within advocacy and grassroots organizing spaces, contributing to political campaigns, public initiatives and legislative offices, as well as completing her graduate studies in public policy. Those experiences continue to shape her writing. She is interested in the intersection of public policy and private experience, particularly how institutions shape identity, memory and relationships.

A creative with a compromised attention span, Gabby’s hobbies are often fleeting but writing has remained the one enduring constant throughout her life. Since childhood, writing has been the place where she returns to untangle anxiety, grief, joy, rage, devotion, shame, and wonder. It is how she makes sense of the uncertainty in the world around her.

Gabby is published in several literary journals and small presses. She also writes a monthly Substack newsletter featuring her essays, short stories and poetry.

This portfolio brings together a selection of her published and ongoing work.