This is an interview with British-Palestinian writer, lawyer and activist Selma Dabbagh, who is the author of a novel, Out of It (2011), a number of short stories and a radio play produced by the BBC, as well as numerous reviews and blogs. Out of It is set in Gaza, the Gulf and London and will be published in Arabic translation in 2014. In this conversation, which began at Lancaster University in November 2013 and extended via email over the next two months, Dabbagh discusses her motivations for, and the challenges of, setting her fiction in parts of the Middle East, in particular Palestine. She comments on her “British-Palestinian” identity and the increasing visibility of Palestinian writing in English and explores the relationship between literary writing, in particular the novel, history and politics.