Hala Alyan
Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and grew up in Kuwait, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon. She earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and an MA from Columbia University. While completing her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, she specialized in trauma and addiction work with various populations.
Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.
She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).
Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab America
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Alison Espach
Alison Espach grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, where she lived for most of her life. She earned her BA from Providence College and her Masters in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Five Chapters, Glamour, Salon, The Daily Beast, Writer's Digest, and other journals.
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Randa Jarrar
Randa Jarrar is a Palestinian-American author, translator, performer, and professor.
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Jarrar's first novel, the coming-of-age story A Map of Home (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays in a number of anthologies and collections as well as her short story collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (2016), and her memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country (2021).
Jarrar was born in 1978 in Chicago, to an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt. After the Gulf War in 1991, she and her 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 -
Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Whip Smart, Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Her memoir, The Dry Season, is forthcoming on June 3, 2025 from Alfred A. Knopf. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The Barbara Deming Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The
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Susan Abulhawa
Also Susan Abulhawa
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(Arabic: سوزان أبو الهوى)
susan abulhawa was born to refugees of the 1967 war when Israel captured what remained of Palestine, including Jerusalem. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter. She is the founder and President of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, was likewise a bestseller, translated into 20 languages. The reach of her books and volume of her readership have made abulhawa one of the most widely read Arab authors in the world. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless Wo -
Anelise Chen
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Anelise Chen is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University, where she is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her first novel, So Many Olympic Exertions, was published by Kaya Press in 2017. It was a VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Finalist. She is currently working on a second book, Clam Down (One World), based on her brief stint as the Paris Review Daily's "mollusk correspondent." She is a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 Awardee. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, The Believer, McSweeney's, BOMB, The New Republic, NPR, Village Voice, Conjunctions, and more. -
Jessica B. Harris
According to Heritage Radio Network, there's perhaps no greater expert on the food and foodways of the African Diaspora than Doctor Jessica B. Harris. She is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, The Africa Cookook: Tastes of a Continent, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. Harris also conceptualized and organized The Black Family Reunion Cook Book.Her most recent book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, was the International Association for
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Elizabeth Acevedo
ELIZABETH ACEVEDO is a New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, With the Fire on High, and Clap When You Land. Her critically-acclaimed debut novel, The Poet X, won the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. She is also the recipient of the Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction, the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and the Boston Globe-Hornbook Award. Additionally, she was honored with the 2019 Pure Belpré Author Award for celebrating, affirming, and portraying Latinx culture and experience.
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Her books include, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths (YesYes 2016), The Poet X (HarperCollins, 2018), & With The Fire On High (HarperCollins, 2019), and Clap When You Land (HarperCollins, 2020).
She holds a BA in Performing Arts f -
Jos Charles
Jos Charles is a trans poet, editor, and author of feeld, a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, selected by Fady Joudah and Safe Space, a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.
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Charles Wright
Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac.
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From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States. Charles Wright is often ranked as one of the best American poets of his generation. He attended Davidson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; he also served four years in the U.S. Army, and it was while stationed in Italy that Wright began to read and write poetry. He is the author of over 20 books of poetry.
Charles Wright is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. His many collections of poetry a -
Badeeah Hassan Ahmed
Badeeah Hassan Ahmed was eighteen when ISIS invaded Kocho, her village in Northwestern Iraq. ISIS killed many of her loved ones and abducted women and girls to sell off in a ruthless human trafficking operation. Badeeah lied to ISIS, saying her three-year-old nephew Eivan was her own son. After two months in captivity, she and another woman named Navine were sold to al Amriki, the American, who was head of weapons for ISIS in Aleppo. Throughout her ordeal, Badeeah managed to keep Navine and Eivan’s spirits alive by telling folk stories and reminding them of their strong Yazidi spirituality, which seeks peace and enlightenment even in the darkest of times.
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When Badeeah managed to escape ISIS with Eivan and Navine and it was discovered that he -
Refaat Alareer
Refaat Alareer (Arabic: رفعت العرعير) was a Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and activist from the Gaza Strip.
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Alareer was born in Gaza City in 1979 during the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, which he said had negatively influenced every move and decision he made. Alareer earned a BA in English in 2001 from the Islamic University of Gaza and an MA from University College London in 2007. He earned a PhD in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017 with a dissertation on John Donne.
He taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, which matched experienced authors with young writers in Gaza, and promoted the power of storytelling as a mean -
Susan Muaddi Darraj
Susan Muaddi Darraj won the 2016 American Book Award for her novel-in-stories, A Curious Land: Stories from Home.
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Her new novel, Behind You Is the Sea (Harper Collins, 2024) is set in Baltimore and follows the stories of a Palestinian American immigrant community.
Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was honored by the U.S. State Department’s Arabic Book Program.
She was named a 2016 USA Ford Fellow, and she has received awards for her writing from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Her new children's chapter book series, FARAH ROCKS, was published from Capstone Books in January 2020. It is the first children's book series to feature an Arab American protagonist.
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Mosab Abu Toha
Mosab Abu Toha is the winner of a Palestine Book Award, an American Book Award, Walcott Poetry Prize, and also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
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He is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. It won a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
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Sahar Mustafah
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. Her short stories have been awarded the Guild Literary Complex Prize for fiction, a Distinguished Story honor from Best American Short Stories, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
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David Litt
David Litt entered the White House as a speechwriter in 2011, and left in 2016 as a senior presidential speechwriter and special assistant to the president. In addition to writing remarks for President Barack Obama on a wide range of domestic policy issues, David served as the lead joke writer for several White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologues. Since leaving government, David has written speeches, op-eds, and jokes for Fortune 100 CEOs, professional athletes, leading philanthropists, and prominent political figures.
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His New York Times bestselling memoir, Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years, was published in 2017. His second book will be released on June 16, 2020. He is currently developing a sitcom for ABC based on his l -
Najwan Darwish
Najwan Darwish; born December 8, 1978 in Jerusalem, is an Arabic-language poet. The New York Review of Books has described him as "one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation". In 2014, NPR included his book Nothing More To Lose as one of the best books of the year.
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Besides being a prominent poet, Darwish is a leading cultural editor in the Arab world. He has played an important role in developing Arabic cultural journalism by co-founding independent magazines and mainstream daily newspapers, as well as being a sharp critic.He was the chief editor of Min Wa Ila (From/To) Magazine in Palestine,and the cultural critic for Al Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon from 2006 to 2012, amongst other key positions in cultural journalism. In 20 -
Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the founder and editor of Divedapper, a home for dialogues with vital voices in contemporary poetry.
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His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017.
Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Iowa. He was a visiting professor at Purdue University in Indiana in Fall 2017. -
Hannah Moushabeck
Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author and book worker who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers and learned the power of literature at a young age. Hannah has worked in publishing for over a decade at companies such as Chronicle Books, The Quarto Group, and Simon & Schuster. She now runs Interlink Publishing, the only Palestinian-owned publisher in the United States, alongside her family.
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Her debut picture book Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books) won The New England Book Award and The Arab American Book Award. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations. -
Solmaz Sharif
Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and New York University. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Witness, and others. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, her work has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, scholarships the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a winter fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an NEA fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship. She has most recently been selected to receive a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award as well as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent R
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Sandra Uwiringiyimana
Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a member of the Banyamulenge tribe (also referred to as Tutsi Congolese), and was born in South Kivu, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but spent the majority of her childhood in the Congolese city of Uvira. She is a survivor of the Second Congo War, and the 2004 massacre at the refugee camp in Gatumba Burundi by the National Liberation Front of Burundi. She spent a few years in Africa as a stateless refugee, before the U.N. offered them a chance to relocate to America in late 2005. The application and screening process took years, but in April 2007 the family left Africa for Rochester New York.
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Steven Rowley
Steven Rowley is the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, The Editor, named by NPR and Esquire Magazine as one of the Best Books of 2019, and The Guncle, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for 2021 Novel of the Year and semi-finalist for The Thurber Prize in American Humor. His fiction has been published in twenty languages. Rowley lives in Palm Springs, CA with his husband, the writer Byron Lane.
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Sally Wen Mao
Sally Wen Mao is the author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kinereth Gensler Award. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013 and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She has a forthcoming book, Oculus, out from Graywolf Press in 2019.
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Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold is an American journalist and poet. She was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Ann Petry
Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American author who became the first black woman writer with book sales topping a million copies for her novel The Street.
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The wish to become a professional writer was raised in Ann for the first time in high school when her English teacher read her essay to the class commenting on it with the words: “I honestly believe that you could be a writer if you wanted to.” The decision to become a pharmacist was her family’s. She turned up in college and graduated with a Ph.G. degree from Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 and worked in the family business for several years. She also began to write short stories while she was working at the pharmacy.
On February 22, 1938, she marr -
Fariha Róisín
Fariha Róisín is a writer, culture worker, and educator.
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Born in Ontario, Canada, they were raised in Sydney, Australia, and are based in Los Angeles, California. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, they are interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam, degrowth and queer identities and has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Village Voice, and others.
Róisín has published a book of poetry entitled How To Cure A Ghost (Abrams), a journal called Being In Your Body (Abrams), and a novel named Like A Bird (Unnamed Press) which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Globe and Mail, Harper’s Bazaar -
Yara Zgheib
Yara Zgheib is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in International Affairs in Diplomacy from Centre D'études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris. She is fluent in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish. Yara is a writer for several US and European magazines, including The Huffington Post, The Four Seasons Magazine, A Woman’s Paris, The Idea List, and Holiday Magazine. She writes on culture, art, travel, and philosophy on her blog, "Aristotle at Afternoon Tea"
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George Elliott Clarke
A seventh-generation Nova Scotian, George Elliott Clarke was born in 1960 in Windsor Plans, Nova Scotia. He is known as a poet, as well as for his two-volume anthology of Black Writing from Nova Scotia, Fire in the Water. Volume One contains spirituals, poety sermons, and accounts from 1789 to the mid-twentieth century; Volume Two collects the work of the Black Cultural Renaissance in Nova Scotia, which, in Clarke's words, "speaks to people everywhere about overcoming hardships and liberating the spirit." Currently on faculty at Duke University, he is now writing both a play and an opera on slavery in Nova Scotia, a reformulation of Shelley's The Cenci. He has won many awards including the 1981 Prize for Adult Poetry from the Writers Federa
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Clint Smith
Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
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Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a Beirut-born, Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem.
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Abu Al-Hayyat is the author of four collections of poems, including You Can Be the Last Leaf (Milkweed, 2022), translated by Fady Joudah; four novels, including the latest, No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab, 2013); and numerous children’s stories, including The Blue Pool of Questions (Penny Candy Books, LLC, 2017). Her work has appeared in A Bird Is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry (Freight Books, 2014). She is also the editor of The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction (Comma Press, 2021).
Abu Al-Hayyat is the director of Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian commu -
Emily R. Austin
Emily Austin is the author of EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WILL SOMEDAY BE DEAD, INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, GAY GIRL PRAYERS, WE COULD BE RATS, and IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP. She currently resides in Ottawa/the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
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Bushra Rehman
Bushra Rehman grew up in Corona, Queens but her mother says she was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. This would explain a few things. Bushra was a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a Greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems.
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Her first novel Corona, a poetic on-the-road adventure about being South-Asian in the United States, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite novels about NYC. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home--and surviving.” Rehman’s -
Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times and is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, including Normal Distance; The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays; The Word Pretty; L'Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems; The Self Unstable; and The French Exit.
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Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of six poetry collections, including American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, How to Be Drawn, and Lighthead, which won the National Book Award. He is a MacArthur Fellow and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Weike Wang
Weike Wang is a graduate of Harvard University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry and her doctorate in public health. She received her MFA from Boston University. Her fiction has been published in or is forthcoming from Alaska Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, The Journal, Ploughshares, Redivider, and SmokeLong Quarterly.
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Diana Khoi Nguyen
A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her video work has been exhibited at the Miller ICA. Nguyen is a MacDowell and Kundiman fellow, and a member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). She's received an NEA fellowship and awards from the 92Y "Discovery" Poetry and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery contests. She teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Fady Joudah
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the University of Georgia in Athens, and then the Medical College of Georgia, before completing his medical training at the University of Texas. Joudah currently practices as an ER physician in Houston, Texas. He has also volunteered abroad with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
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Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.
In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of r -
Saba Mahmood
Saba Mahmood is an associate professor of social cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley.
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Tayari Jones
Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State Univers
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Lydia Conklin
Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, a Creative Writing Fellowship from Emory University, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, One Story, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. Last year they served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction at the Unive
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Jenny Zhang
Jenny Zhang is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States. She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags.
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Zeyn Joukhadar
Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of The Thirty Names of Night, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award, and The Map of Salt and Stars, which won the Middle East Book Award and was a Goodreads Choice Awards and Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize finalist. His work has appeared in the Kink anthology, Salon, The Paris Review, [PANK], and elsewhere, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Joukhadar guest edited Mizna's 2020 Queer + Trans Voices issue, serves on the board of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and mentors emerging writers of color with the Periplus Collective.
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Ghassan Zeineddine
Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East.
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He is the author of the short story collection Dearborn (2023) and coeditor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging (2022).
His fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, The Arkansas International, Witness, Pleiades, Fiction International, The Common, Epiphany, FOLIO, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and the Iron Horse Literary Review, among other publications.
He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College and has previously taught at the American University of Beirut, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Kenyon Col -
Ghada Karmi
Dr Ghada Karmi was born in Palestine and then had to flee with her family when it became Israel. She grew up in Britain and now she's a doctor, author, academic, and well-know international commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Ghada still vividly remembers a huge bombing just behind her house in Jerusalem. "It was absolutely dreadful. I was bewildered, I was scared - I could see my parents were scared, which is very scary for a child because you think your parents know it all and they look after you. I knew, from that moment on, things had changed for us. I didn't know how, but things weren't going to be the same again."
After fleeing their family home, her family eventually settled in London. "My mother was very angry about the -
Smokii Sumac
Smokii Sumac is a proud member of the Ktunaxa nation located in what is currently southeastern British Columbia. They are a PhD Candidate in Indigenous Studies at Trent University where their research centres on “coming home” as a Ktunaxa adoptee and two-spirit person. Smokii identifies as queer, transmasculine, two-spirit, a poet, and uncle, and auntie and a cat person. They accept he/him/his or they/them/theirs pronouns. Smokii’s work has been published in Write Magazine, and under his former name* (he is a man of many names) in Canadian Literature, Aanikoobijigan//Waawaashkeshi (a project by Anishinaabe/Métis artist Dylan Miner), and on coffee sleeves in local Peterborough coffee shops as one of the winners of e-city lit’s artsweek conte
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Melissa Lozada-Oliva
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is an American poet and educator based in New York. Her poem, "Like Totally Whatever" won the 2015 National Poetry Slam Championship, and went viral.
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Melania Luisa Marte
Melania Luisa Marte is an American writer, poet, and musician from New York. Her viral poem “Afro-Latina” was featured by Instagram on their IG TV for National Poetry Month and has garnered over nine million views. Her work has also been featured by Ain’t I Latina?, AfroPunk, The Root, Teen Vogue, Telemundo, Remezcla, PopSugar, and elsewhere. She currently lives with her partner and child between the Dominican Republic and Texas. You can follow her journey on social media: @MelaTocaTierra.
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C.N. Lester
CN Lester is a multi-genre musician, author of the critically-acclaimed Trans Like Me, and founder and artistic director of arts event Transpose. CN is a singer-songwriter, classical singer, deviser, and composer. They hold an interdisciplinary performance/research PhD on composer Barbara Strozzi; research interests include performance and composition, gender and music, and the history of gender and sexuality. They work internationally as a trans/queer/feminist educator, writer, speaker, and activist. Words and music at BBC Radio 3 & 4, Newsnight, ITV, The Guardian, SBS, Sydney Opera House, Barbican, Southbank Centre, Royal Exchange, The Arts Club, and arts and book festivals/radio/print worldwide.
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They’re currently working on their next al -
Joyelle McSweeney
Joyelle McSweeney is a poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and professor at the University of Notre Dame. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard before earning an MPhil from Oxford and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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With Johannes Göransson, McSweeney founded and edits Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. The press focuses on modern and contemporary works from Latin America, Asia, the US and Europe, including such major authors as Hiromi Itō, Kim Hyesoon, Aase Berg and Raul Zurita. Action Books seeks to move poetry and poetics from other literary cultures into the center of US poetry discussions and undermine the nationalist rubrics under which literature is marketed and discussed. In addition to -
Jennifer Pastiloff
Jen Pastiloff travels the world with her unique workshop “On Being Human,” a hybrid of yoga related movement, writing, sharing out loud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, calls Jen “a conduit of awakenings.” Jen has been featured on Good Morning America, New York Magazine, Health Magazine, CBS News and more for her unique style of teaching, which she has taught to thousands of women in sold-out workshops all over the world. Bring a journal, and open heart and the willingness to grow open and stronger for her workshops.
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She is also the founder of the online magazine The Manifest-Station. Jen leads annual retreats to Italy and France and she is the guest speaker at Canyon Ranch and Miraval R -
Lauren Christensen
Lauren Christensen is an editor at The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
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Elias Chacour
Elias Chacour is the Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and All Galilee of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Noted for his efforts to promote reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis, he is the author of two books about the experience of Palestinian people living in present-day Israel. He describes himself as a "Palestinian-Arab-Christian-Israeli".
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Zahra Fatima Hankir
Zahra Hankir (زهرة حنقير) is a Lebanese-British journalist who writes about the intersection of politics, culture, and society in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Conde Nast Traveller, Guernica, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, Vice, BBC News, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg Businessweek, Roads & Kingdoms, and Literary Hub, among others. She was awarded a Jack R. Howard Fellowship in International Journalism to attend Columbia Journalism School and holds degrees in politics and Middle Eastern studies from the American University of Beirut and the University of Manchester, respectively.
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Tarik Dobbs
Tarik Dobbs (b. 1997, Dearborn, MI) is a writer, artist, and Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow.
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Poems by Dobbs have been featured in the anthologies Best New Poets and Best of the Net, as well as in AGNI, American Poetry Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others.
Dobbs is the director of poetry.onl and has served as a guest editor at Mizna and Zoeglossia: A Community for Poets with Disabilities.
Dobbs holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and an M.F.A. in art, theory, practice from Northwestern University. Dobbs is assistant professor of English in creative writing (poetry) at Southwest Minnesota State University.
The debut poetry collections by Dobbs, Nazar Boy (June 11, 2 -
Chen Chen
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), both published by BOA Editions and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). A Kundiman community member, his honors include the Thom Gunn Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the National Book Award longlist, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. His work appears in many publications, including three editions of The Best American Poetry and two editions of The Forward Book of Poetry. He teaches for the l0w-residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioc
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Olivia Gatwood
Olivia Gatwood is a nationally touring poet, performer, and educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has been featured on HBO and Verses & Flow, as well as in Muzzle Magazine, Bustle and The Huffington Post, among others. She has been a finalist at the National Poetry Slam, Women of the World Poetry Slam, and Brave New Voices. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute’s Fiction Program.
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Anis Mojgani
ANIS MOJGANI is a two time National Poetry Slam Champion, winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam, and multiple-time TEDx Speaker. He has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, AIR Serenbe, and the Oregon Literary Arts Writers-In-The-Schools program. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in the pages of such journals as Rattle, Forklift Ohio, Paper Darts, and Thrush.
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Anis is the author of five books, all published by Write Bloody Publishing: The Pocketknife Bible (2015). Songs From Under the River (2013), The Feather Room (2011), Over the Anvil We Stretch (2008), and his latest, In the Pockets of Small Gods (2018). Originally from New Orleans, he currently lives in Oregon. -
Alonso Duralde
Alonso Duralde is reviews editor at TheWrap, as well as the author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas and 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men; he is also the co-author of I'll Be Home for Christmas Movies with the hosts of the Deck the Hallmark Podcast. He is the co-host of the Linoleum Knife; A Film and a Movie; The Untitled Ify, Drea, and Alonso Project; and Breakfast All Day podcasts, and has discussed film on CNN, PBS, TCM, ABC and FilmStruck, as well as in numerous documentaries.
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Betty Shamieh
Betty Shamieh (she/her) is the author of fifteen plays. Shamieh's debut novel, Too Soon, was published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in January 2025.
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Malvolio, an irreverent comedy and sequel to Twelfth Night, had its world premiere at the Classical Theatre of Harlem as part of their annual Uptown Shakespeare in the Park at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheatre in July 2023 (co-directed by Ian Belknap and Ty Jones). Malvolio was selected as a New York Times Critics Pick and nominated for ten AUDELCO Awards, including Best Play.
Her other off-Broadway premieres include The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop, Director: Sam Gold) and Roar (The New Group, Director: Marion McClinton). Roar was selected as a New York Times Cr -
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Minnie Bruce Pratt (b. September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina (1979). She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, rec
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Leila Mottley
Leila Mottley is the author of the novel NIGHTCRAWLING, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times best seller. NIGHTCRAWLING was longlisted for the Booker Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Mottley was the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and published her debut poetry collection WOKE UP NO LIGHT in 2024. Mottley’s writing has also been published in The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Marie Claire, and more. Her sophomore novel, THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG, is forthcoming in June 2025.
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Susan Ashline
Susan Ashline is the author of A Jacket Off the Gorge, the nationally acclaimed true crime book Without A Prayer, and the forthcoming Ungrateful Bastard. She is featured in two Hulu docuseries: “How I Escaped My Cult” and “Cult Justice.” The episodes are based on her book Without A Prayer. Susan’s journalism career spans more than twenty-five years and includes news reporting for most of the major television networks. She has covered everything from breaking news to politics. Her long-time role as a court correspondent sparked a deep interest in law and the criminal justice system. Susan has worked as a radio reporter, talk show host, television news anchor, magazine editor, website manager, and staff newspaper columnist for publishing jugg
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Rachel McKibbens
Poet, activist, playwright and essayist Rachel McKibbens is the author of the poetry collections Into the Dark and Emptying Field (2013) and Pink Elephant (2009). The Rumpus wrote of Pink Elephant, “McKibbens awakens and haunts with selfless honesty.” Her poems, short stories, essays and creative non-fiction have been featured in numerous journals and blogs, including Her Kind, The Los Angeles Review, The Best American Poetry Blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Rumpus, The London Magazine, The Acentos Review, World Literature Today, Radius, and The American Poetry Journal.
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McKibbens is a well-known member of the poetry slam community: she is a nine-time National Poetry Slam team member, has appeared on eight NPS final stages, and coached the Ne -
Jillian Weise
The Cyborg Jillian Weise (Cy/Cy's/Cyself, also She/Hers) is a poet, video artist and activist. Recent essays include Common Cyborg and The Dawn of the Tryborg. Cy started Borg 4 Borg Productions and directed the film A KIM DEAL PARTY ft. Eileen Myles, Patricia Lockwood, Alice Wong and more. From 2016-2020, Weise performed the fictional character of Tipsy Tullivan across social.
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Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. After her mother died in childbirth a year later, Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother and other relatives for several years. In 1943, she moved to Harlem with her sister to live with their father and his third wife.
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She earned a B.A. in political science from Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at New York University and studied poetry with Louise Bogan. Sanchez formed a writers' workshop in Greenwich Village, attended by such poets as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), and Larry Neal. Along with Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight, she formed the "Broadside Quartet" of young poets, intr -
Salim Lemelle
Salim Lemelle is a genre/sci-fi writer from Southern California. Salim sold his short story Quietus to QC Entertainment (Get Out) which he will adapt with Steven Caple Jr. (Creed 2) for Steven to direct.
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Before that, Salim was selected as a fellow in 2015 for the prestigious Universal Pictures Emerging Writers Fellowship.
He attended Pomona College earning his BA, then later receiving his MFA in screenwriting from The University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts. -
Seyward Darby
Seyward Darby is the editor in chief of The Atavist Magazine. She previously served as the deputy editor of Foreign Policy and the online editor and assistant managing editor of The New Republic. As a writer, she has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, among other publications.
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Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera is the only son of Lucha Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera; the three were campesinos living from crop to crop on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats award in 1997. He is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist who draws from real life experiences as well as years of education to inform his work. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park converted
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Claire Wahmanholm
Claire Wahmanholm received her BA from UW-Madison, her MFA from the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University, and her PhD from the University of Utah. Her chapbook, Night Vision, won the 2017 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest. Her debut full-length collection, Wilder (Milkweed Editions), won the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award. Her second collection, Redmouth, was published with Tinderbox Editions in 2019. Her third collection, Meltwater, was published through Milkweed Editions in 2023. A 2020 McKnight Writing Fellow, her poems have most recently appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Blackbird, Washington Square
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Bruna Dantas Lobato
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translation for The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel. She was born and raised in Natal, Brazil, and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is forthcoming in October 2024 from Grove Atlantic.
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A. Kendra Greene
A. Kendra Greene vaccinated wild boars in Chile, taught English in Korea, and started her museum career adhering text to the wall one letter at a time. She has an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and is currently the Writer in Residence at the Dallas Museum of Art.
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Dawn Lundy Martin
Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet, essayist, and conceptual-video artist. She is the author of four books of poems: Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House, 2017); Life in a Box is a Pretty Life (Nightboat Books, 2015); which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; DISCIPLINE (Nightboat Books, 2011); A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering (University of Georgia Press, 2007); and three limited edition chapbooks. Most recently, she co-edited with Erica Hunt an anthology, Letters to the Future: BLACK WOMEN / Radical WRITING (Kore Press, 2018). Her nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Harper's, n+1, and elsewhere. Martin is a Professor of English in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Cent
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Sandy Tolan
Sandy Tolan is a teacher and radio documentary producer. He is the author of two books: Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later (Free Press, 2000), about the intersection between race, sports, and American heroes; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006). The Washington Post called the book “extraordinary” and selected it among their top nonfiction titles for 2006; the Christian Science Monitor wrote, “no novel could be more compelling” and proclaimed, “It will be one of the best nonfiction books you will read this year.”Sandy has reported from more than 30 countries, especially in the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe.
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As co-founder of Homelands Produc -
Camille Acker
Camille Acker grew up in Washington, DC and is the author of the short story collection, Training School for Negro Girls, published by Feminist Press in 2018. She holds a B.A. in English from Howard University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Her writing has received support from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Voices of Our Nations Arts, and Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. She was a fiction co-editor for Dismantle: An Anthology from the VONA/Voices Workshop (Thread Makes Blanket Press, 2014). She has taught at New Mexico State University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago Writers Studio, and Blue Stoop. Her writing has appeared in a number of outlets including The New York Time B
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torrin a. greathouse
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. In 2020, they received fellowships from Zoeglossia and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Their work is published in POETRY, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. Her debut collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound was published from Milkweed Editions in December 2020.
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Omar Khalifah
عمر خليفة كاتب وباحث يعمل أستاذا للأدب العربي بجامعة جورج تاون في قطر. حصل على شهادتي البكالوريوس والماجستير في اللغة العربية وآدابها من الجامعة الأردنية، ثم نال شهادة الدكتوراه في دراسات الشرق الأوسط من جامعة كولومبيا في نيويورك. نشر مجموعة قصصية بعنوان "كأنني أنا" عام 2010، ورواية بعنوان "قابض الرمل" عام 2020، وكتابا أكاديميا باللغة الانجليزية بعنوان
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Nasser in the Egyptian Imaginary. -
Mohammed El-Kurd
MOHAMMED EL-KURD is an internationally touring and award-winning poet, writer, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine.
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In 2021, He was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine.
He is best known for his role as a co-founder of the #SaveSheikhJarrah movement. His work has been featured in numerous international outlets and he has appeared repeatedly as a commentator on major TV networks.
Currently, El-Kurd serves as the first-ever Palestine Correspondent for The Nation. His first published essay in this role, "A Night with Palestine's Defenders of the Mountain," was shortlisted for the 2022 One World Media Print Award.
RIFQA, his debut collection of poetry, was published by Haymarket -
Bridget Crocker
Explorer. Storyteller. Guide.
A leading whitewater explorer and river guide, Bridget Crocker writes adventure memoir for life travelers forging new directions in their relationships and lives. Crocker's writing transports readers to far-flung locations filled with flawed characters overcoming incredible adversity. A trauma survivor, Crocker explores themes of recovery and overcoming multi-generational cycles as well as sexism and racism in the outdoor industry. In her work as an author, speaker and leader of women's empowerment river workshops, Crocker helps others strengthen their connection with the natural world and find the courage to navigate harrowing obstacles both on and off the river.Writing Background
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Crocker’s adventure travel back -
Tarfia Faizullah
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (SIU, 2014), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, New England Review, Washington Square, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Copper Nickel Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Detroit where she is a writer-in-residence for InsideOut and co-edits
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Emily Jungmin Yoon
Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco Books, September 2018) and Ordinary Misfortunes (Tupelo Press, July 2017), winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize. Her poems and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and elsewhere. She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, AWP’s WC&C Scholarship Competition, The Home School in Miami, the Aspen Institute, New York University, the University of Chicago, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and Sarah Lawrence College Summer Seminar for Writers. She is the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, an
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Rachel Syme
Rachel Syme is a staff writer at the New Yorker and has also written for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ,and Bookforum. She is working on an upcoming book, entitled Magpie, for Alfred A. Knopf.
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Tayi Tibble
Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) is an indigenous writer and poet based in Te Whanganui a Tara, Aoteraroa. She was born in 1995. In 2017, she completed a Master's in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize. She works in publicity at Te Herenga Waka University Press.
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Threa Almontaser
Threa Almontaser holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her debut, The Wild Fox of Yemen, was nominated for a National Book Award and won the Walt Whitman Award from The Academy of American Poets.
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Chris Cander
Chris Cander is the author of the novels THE YOUNG OF OTHER ANIMALS, A GRACIOUS NEIGHBOR, THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO, WHISPER HOLLOW, and 11 STORIES, and the grade K-5 picture book THE WORD BURGLAR. Visit www.chriscander.com for more info.
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Natalie Wee
Natalie Wee is a queer creator. She wrote two poetry collections, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines (San Press, 2021) and Beast At Every Threshold (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022).
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Her work explores themes of race, gender, queerness, and nationhood, and is deeply informed by grassroots communities. Born in Singapore to Malaysian parents, she is currently a settler in Tkaronto. -
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Sarah Ghazal Ali
Sarah Ghazal Ali is a Pakistani American writer. She is the author of the poetry collection Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a California Book Award, and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A Stadler and Kundiman Fellow, Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. She lives and teaches in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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Mosab Abu Toha
Mosab Abu Toha is the winner of a Palestine Book Award, an American Book Award, Walcott Poetry Prize, and also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
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He is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. It won a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nati -
Salim Lemelle
Salim Lemelle is a genre/sci-fi writer from Southern California. Salim sold his short story Quietus to QC Entertainment (Get Out) which he will adapt with Steven Caple Jr. (Creed 2) for Steven to direct.
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Before that, Salim was selected as a fellow in 2015 for the prestigious Universal Pictures Emerging Writers Fellowship.
He attended Pomona College earning his BA, then later receiving his MFA in screenwriting from The University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts. -
Rachel Harrison
Rachel Harrison is the author of The Return, nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica and Electric Lit. She lives in New York with her husband and their cat/overlord.
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Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. -
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
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Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award, Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention for the 2018 Arab American Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.
Her writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Revi -
Fatimah Asghar
Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. She is the author of the poetry collection If They Should Come for Us and the chapbook After. She is also the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated Brown Girls, a web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Her work has been featured on news outlets such as PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others.
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Nina Bocci
Nina Bocci is a novelist, publicist, eternal optimist, unabashed lipgloss enthusiast, constant apologist, and a hopeless romanticist. She has too many college degrees that she’s not using, and a Lego addiction that she blames on her son.
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Dennis E. Taylor
I am a retired computer programmer, an enthusiastic snowboarder, and an inveterate science fiction reader.
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And, apparently, an author now. Did not see that coming. -
Danez Smith
Danez Smith is the author of [insert] boy (2014, YesYes Books), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Their 2nd collection will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. Their work has published & featured widely including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, & Ploughshares. They are a 2014 Ruth Lilly - Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, a Cave Canem and VONA alum, and a recipient of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. They are a 2-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, placing 2nd in 2014. They edit for The Offing & are a founding member of 2 collectives, Dark Noise and Sad Boy Supper Club. They live in the midwest most of the time.
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Danez -
G.S. Carr
Raised in Charlotte NC, G.S. Carr has always enjoyed indulging in her imagination. At a very young age she had a thirst for reading and the many possibilities it helped come alive in her mind’s eye. She consumed books like they were the air she needed to survive. It seemed inevitable that her love of reading would transcend into a desire to create her own stories. She began writing poetry and stories at the age of 10. By the time she was thirteen she found her passion in the romance genre and has not looked back ever since.
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Chris Cander
Chris Cander is the author of the novels THE YOUNG OF OTHER ANIMALS, A GRACIOUS NEIGHBOR, THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO, WHISPER HOLLOW, and 11 STORIES, and the grade K-5 picture book THE WORD BURGLAR. Visit www.chriscander.com for more info.
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Alison Espach
Alison Espach grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, where she lived for most of her life. She earned her BA from Providence College and her Masters in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Five Chapters, Glamour, Salon, The Daily Beast, Writer's Digest, and other journals.
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She is currently teaching in New York City.