Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistable memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.
 
With dizzying speed she finds herself attending Yasser Arafat's funeral, sharing a holiday dinner with a suicide bomber's family, tour-guiding Israeli friends around the West Bank, dating a Palestinian from a conservative Muslim village, being held at gunpoint and injured by a stun grenade, and witnessing the 2005 Disengagement from inside the Gaza Strip. The gripping narrative focuses not only on violence, terror, and social and political upheavals but also on the daily rounds of house parties, concerts, barbecues, weddings, jokes, harvests, and romantic drama that happen in between.
 
Funny, gorgeous, shocking, and galvanizing, Fast Times in Palestine challenges the way we think not only about the Middle East but albout human nature and our place in the world.

 “A moving, inspiring account of life in Palestine that’s enormously informative yet reads like a novel.” 
-- REBECCA VILKOMERSON, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace

“It’s love in the time of occupation as Pamela Olson... takes us on the emotional roller-coaster of her very personal experience of life in Ramallah -- and in doing so lays bare the human drama of a people... determined to live free.”
-- TONY KARON, Senior Editor, TIME

Pamela Olson grew up in small town Oklahoma and studied physics and political science at Stanford University. After graduating, she realized to her surprise that she didn't want to be a scientist after all and instead began bartending, saved money to travel, and landed unexpectedly in Palestine, where she became a blogger, journalist, and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.

After a year working at a think tank in Washington, DC and trying to affect politics from the inside, she decided to bring what she had learned in the Middle East directly to the American people. She began writing a book called Fast Times in Palestine, a chronicle of her searing education in the Holy Land and the incredible adventures she had along the way. It was published in May 2011.

Her writing has also been featured in the International Herald Tribune, CounterPunch, Israel's Occupation Magazine, Mondoweiss, and The Stanford Magazine among other publications.