Laura Albast holds a BA in Political Studies and Media Communications from the American University of Beirut and an MA in International Affairs and Journalism from Boston University. 

Journalism
Laura is a writer and editor of news, analysis, narrative journalism, and arts and culture. She has bylines in The Washington Post, The Nation, Prism Reports, The New Arab, Arab American News, Doha News, BU News Service, The Daily Free Press, An-nahar, and Palestine Square. She also has translation credit in The Nation, FIASCO podcast, and WBEZ’s This American Life, as well as translation bylines in The Markup‘s investigation on Instagram demoting content relevant to the Genocide in Gaza, and in Bloomberg Businessweek’s “New Workers of the World.” Laura worked closely with journalist Vauhini Vara to communicate with and translate the story of Omar Elhaj Ibrahim, a Syrian Amazon warehouse picker in Hamburg, Germany. The feature was longlisted for the One World Media Award.

Laura served as the Senior Editor of Digital Strategy and Communications at the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA in Washington, DC for six years.

As the editor of Palestine Square, the blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies, she published 500+ stories covering Palestinian affairs, culture, and politics. She regularly worked with freelance writers and journalists, and trained students and youth on how to write feature stories, the fundamentals of narrative journalism, and media relations. She is currently a fellow with the Institute, providing editorial guidance to the blog as an independent Editor-at-Large, contributing research and translation to “The Shireen Abu Akleh Platform on the Targeting of Media and Journalism,” and offering digital media consulting to the team behind the  “Documenting the Targeting and Destruction of the Health Sector in Gaza” database.

In 2024-2025, Laura co-organized and edited a series of interviews with U.S. doctors and nurses who had served on medical missions in Gaza. The testimonies documented the recurring pattern of attacks on Gaza’s health care sector, amplifying frontline voices and recording evidence of atrocities committed by Israeli forces.

When the genocide in Gaza began in October of 2023, Laura collected and translated “Letters from Gaza” for Palestine Square, one of the first collections of testimonies from young writers in the Strip. Several of these letters were republished by outlets such as Protean Magazine, Truthout, and In These Times, with some translated into Spanish. The series gave a couple of contributors their first byline, enabling them to continue reporting during the genocide for other publications.

In the spring of 2023, Laura led and organized a feature writing workshop for five writers of Palestinian heritage to narrate their Nakba stories. Participants attended sessions by veteran U.S.-based journalists on trauma-informed reporting, oral history collecting, and interviewing techniques. 

In 2022, Laura guest-edited and translated a special issue of Skin Deep Magazine in the UK titled Palestine: Ways of Being. The issue included features from the experience of an incarcerated young man, a queer upbringing and return, and Afro-Palestinians from Jerusalem and Gaza. 

In 2017, Laura was embedded with Tito Jackson’s Boston mayoral campaign. She also regularly reviewed the Arab American arts and culture scene in the area. In 2019, during a data journalism bootcamp with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, she covered youth suicide across Massachusetts. Her contribution was credited by NPR’s WGBH.

Laura is particularly interested in reporting on communities that are overlooked due to language barriers. 

Photojournalism
In Washington, DC, Laura was one of the few female photographers of color covering foreign policy-related protests. Her photos of a Yemeni activist’s hunger strike to end U.S. funding to Saudi Arabia’s armed intervention in that country were carried by NPR, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, Insider, Arab American News, and other outlets. Her movement photography has been carried by Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, Prism Reports, Arab American News, and The New Arab.

In college, Laura covered events for the BU News Service, including the Boston Book Festival and a Mashrou’ Leila concert. She also shot a photo essay about a master embroiderer.

Translation
Laura is a native speaker of Arabic and English. She has been freelancing as a professional translator for eight years, having worked on 100+ projects encompassing the translation of documents, video and audio, articles, and research papers. Her clients include the Center for Constitutional Rights where she provided interpretation services for their plaintiff, an ex-prisoner of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison; the CDC, where she translated most COVID-19 guidelines for travelers; U.S. Immigration and Citizenship services; journalists from Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, This American Life, and the FIASCO podcast; as well as scholars from Arizona State University, University of California Los Angeles and Davis, and the American University of Beirut. 

She also regularly offers live interpretation and translation during events and interviews.

Poetry and Creative Work
Laura’s poetry has been published in Romman Cultural (Arabic) and Sekka Magazine (Arabic and English). In 2022, Laura guest edited and translated a special issue published by UK-based creative magazine, Skin Deep, entitled Palestine: Ways of Being. In 2023, Laura translated a short story by a Kuwaiti novelist published in The Common. She was also a semi-finalist in the 2023 Gearhart Poetry Contest by Southeast Review.