Randa Jarrar was born in 1978 in Chicago, to an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. He grew up in Kuwait and Egypt. After the Gulf War in 1991, he and his family returned to the United States, living in the New York area. Jarrar studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, receiving an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan.
