Contributors

Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian author and artist born in Chicago and currently living in Detroit. Her debut graphic novel, Baddawi, was shortlisted for the 2015 Palestine Book Awards and has been translated into three languages. She is also the author and illustrator of The Opening as well as a number of zines and short comics.

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian American writer and bioengineering PhD candidate at Harvard University. He is the author of Birthright and the specimen’s apology. Their work has appeared in the Paris Review, LitHub, the Rumpus, Boston Review, Mizna, and Bettering American Poetry.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD was born in Kuwait in 1981 and is an Egyptian American translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world. He has received an NEA grant, PEN Center USA’s Translation Award, Poetry magazine’s Prize for Translation, and residencies from the Banff Center and the Lannan Foundation.

Janan Alexandra is a Lebanese American poet and MFA candidate at Indiana University. Her poems explore the intersections between language, history, and the body—how language is marked with geography, ecology, trauma, survival, and joy. Her work has been published in the Adroit Journal and Rusted Radishes.

Lina AlSharif is a Palestinian poet currently living in Qatar. She holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her poems have been published in Sukoon and Rusted Radishes. She is a regular performer at Words and Strings and occasionally holds poetry writing workshops.

Zaina Alsous is a daughter of the Palestinian diaspora, born and raised in North Carolina. She is a Michener Fellow at the University of Miami pursuing an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, Bitch Magazine, the New Inquiry, and Best New Poets 2017. Her Lemon Effigies won the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Her forthcoming first book, A Theory of Birds, won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.

Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Mizna, and elsewhere. Her poetry collections have won the Arab American Book Award and the Crab Orchard Series. Her debut novel, Salt Houses, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017, was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize.

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and poet. Some of the publications where her poems appear are Pleiades (forthcoming), HeartWood, Sukoon, Mizna, Split This Rock, and the edited volumes Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees (forthcoming), and Gaza Unsilenced. Zeina holds an MA in Arabic literature.

Bryonn Bain is the founding director of the UCLA Prison Education Program, a professor in the departments of African American Studies and World Arts and Cultures, and serves as a codirector for the International Human Rights Law Clinic.

Jehan Bseiso is a Palestinian poet and researcher who has been working with Doctors Without Borders since 2008. Her co-authored book I Remember My Name is the creative category winner of the Palestine Book Awards. Her poetry is published in various online and offline outlets including the Electronic Intifada, Warscapes, and Mada Masr. Her co-edited poetry anthology Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees is forthcoming.

Kevin Coval is a poet, educator, curator, community builder, and the author of thirteen books. He is artistic director of Young Chicago Authors, and founder of Louder Than a Bomb, the nation’s largest youth poetry festival. The winner of the Studs Terkel award and the MacArthur award for creative and effective institutions, he has mentored thousands of young writers, artists, and musicians.

Najwan Darwish is a Palestinian poet, journalist, editor, and cultural critic born in Jerusalem in 1978. He writes in Arabic, and his work has been

translated into over twenty languages. His 2014 book, Nothing More to Lose, was listed as one of NPR’s best books of the year.

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her first poetry collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow, a United States Artists Ford Fellow, and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. Diaz is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Summer Farah is a writer and Pokemon master currently studying at UC Berkeley where she manages the Berkeley Fiction Review and organizes with CalSLAM. Her work has appeared in hooligan mag, LitHub, and the 2017 Ghassan Kanafani Palestinian Youth Anthology. Follow her on Twitter @summabis.

Nathalie Handal’s recent books include The Republics, winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award and lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers”; the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award. Her collection Life in a Country Album, is forthcoming.

Marc Lamont Hill is an American academic, author, activist, and television personality. He is a professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Fady Joudah has published four poetry collections, The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, and Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. He has translated several poetry collections from the Arabic. He has won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.

Yazan Khalili is a visual artist, architect, and cultural activist who lives and works in and out of Palestine. His works have been exhibited in different places worldwide, and his texts have been published in various publications. He is currently leading the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre and is a visiting teacher at Al Quds Bard college.

Ed Bok Lee is the author of Whorled (American Book Award; Minnesota Book Award). Lee is the son of North and South Korean emigrants—his mother originally a refugee from what is now North Korea; his father was raised during the Japanese colonial period and Korean War in what is now South Korea.

Hisham Matar is an American-born, British Libyan writer. His memoir, The Return, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. His debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to wide acclaim. He currently lives and writes in London.

Khaled Mattawa is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Tocqueville. Mattawa is a MacArthur fellow and his awards include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He teaches at the University of Michigan.

Sahar Mustafah is a first-generation Palestinian American. Her short story collection Code of the West won the 2016 Willow Books Prize for fiction. Her first novel, The Beauty of Your Face, is forthcoming.. She has taught delightful and misunderstood teenagers for over twenty years.

Eileen Myles is a New York and Marfa, TX–based poet, novelist, public talker, and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their twenty books include evolution, Afterglow, Cool for You, I Must Be Living Twice, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Lambda Book Awards, the PSA Shelley Prize, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts poetry award. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian American poet living in Texas. Her next book The Tiny Journalist, about Palestine, will be out in April 2019. Her most recent book is Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners.

Donal O’Kelly is an award-winning Irish playwright, actor, and director renowned for his solo shows. His music-drama Francisco won the Prix Europa and the New York Radio Festival for Best Radio Fiction. He’s a founder of PalFest Ireland, an arts festival with Palestinian artists supporting the people of Palestine.

Bao Phi has been a poet and spoken word artist for over two decades. He is the author of two poetry books, Song I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, as well as two picture books, A Different Pond and My Footprints.

Joe Sacco is a cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, on Israeli-Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde and The Fixer on the Bosnian War.

Najla Said is an actress, playwright, and author of the memoir Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab American Family. Her solo show Palestine ran Off-Broadway for nine sold-out weeks in 2010. She lives in New York. najlasaid.com

Mandy Shunnarah is an Alabama-born writer who now calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Her essays and poetry have been published in Entropy Magazine, the Citron Review, Barely South Review, Heavy Feather Review, the Missing Slate, New Southerner Magazine, and Deep South Magazine. Read more on her website offthebeatenshelf.com

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling novel The Map of Love. Her account of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed, came out in 2014. She is the founder and chair of the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) and a widely published political and cultural commentator.

Fargo Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian American writer, performer, and aspiring muppet from phoenix, arizona. his work has been published or is forthcoming in Cotton Xenomorph, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Peach Mag, and others. he tweets @YouKnowFargo and probably wants to hold your hand.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an American writer of Palestinian, Syrian, and Jordanian heritage. She is the author of two books: Water & Salt and Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. Her poems and essays have most recently been published in the New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, and Lunch Ticket. lenakhalaftuffaha.com

Naomi Wallace is an American playwright and screenwriter from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays and has received several distinguished awards for her work.