{ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z }

Rabab Abdulhadi, Director of the Center for Arab American Studies (and Associate Professor of Sociology) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, was born and raised in the West Bank City of Nablus, Palestine. Abdulhadi received her B.A. from Hunter College and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2000) from Yale University. Her publications include over 70 newspaper and magazine articles in Arabic and English written during her tenure as a journalist based at UN Headquarters in New York (1984-1991) including the first exclusive interview on feminism with Palestinian spokeswoman, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi (MS. Magazine, 1992). She is working on two book manuscripts: Cultures of Resistance and The "Post Colonial" State: Altering the Question of Palestine, and Revising the Master Narrative?: Nation, Resistance, and Feminism in Palestine.

Elmaz Abinader is an Arab American author, playwright, and poet and the winner of the 2002 Goldies Award for Literature. Her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams won the 2000 Josephine Miles/ Pen Oakland Award. Her memoir Children of the Roojme chronicles the lives of three generations of Lebanese immigrants. Her work is included in The Poetry of Arab Women; Grape Leaves, New Letters, ZYZZVA and other collections. Touring with the Country of Origin Band, Elmaz has presented her plays to audiences throughout the Middle East, Central America, Europe and the United States. The play, Country of Origin, won two Drammies, (Oregon Drama Critics Awards). She is a co-founder and faculty member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) which hold summer writing workshops for writers-of-color.

Etel Adnan is an Arab American poet, writer, playwright, and painter, born and raised in Lebanon. She studied philosophy at U.C. Berkeley and Harvard University and taught at Dominican College, San Rafael California for 14 years. Some of her poems have been put to music by Eugene Stewart, Tanya Leon, Gavin Bryars, Henri Treadgill, Annea Lockwood, Zad Multaka, and Hans Gruber and produced in many music festivals in the U.S., Europe, and Lebanon. She lives in Sausalito, California, with travels to Europe and the Arab world. Her publications include In/Somnia, Of Cities & Women, Paris, When It’s Naked, and most recently, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country.

Dr Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Professor of English at Montclair State University and a long-time member and supporter of RAWI, is a  trained vocalist in the North Indian classical tradition and sang some Sufi music for Nathalie Handal'sCD which accompanies Natalie's book, The Lives of Rain--in fact, Nathalie has named her CD after the title of the poem Fawzia sings, called "Spell." Fawzia is the editor of an anthology which includes many Arab and Arab American women's voices including a foreword by Nawal El Saadawi:  Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out ( Interlink Books) and has gone into a second printing within one year. Her memoir-in-progress, "Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani-Muslim Style" has just been published in a collection of writings called And the World Changed: Writings of Contemporary Pakistani Women ( Oxford University Press, 2006).

Jocelyn Ajami is a filmmaker, painter, writer and lecturer. She is the founder of Gypsy Heart Productions. Ajami has published articles for Aramco World Magazine, Cune Press, and Flamenco USA.

Mansour Ajami holds B. A., M. A., and Ph.D. degrees in Arabic literature, Islamic, and Western philosophy from the American University of Beirut and Columbia University. He taught Arabic language, literature, and culture at many universities in the U.S. and abroad and is currently an Arabist reviser/translator at the United Nations. He has recently published a critically acclaimed memoir, The Book of Generations: A Reunion with Memory, and two books of poetry in Arabic: Vignettes from a Different World, and Between Speech and Sleep.  Among his translated works are And the Word Became Poem, and The Trilogy of Exile, and For Poets Only.
Among his other literary and critical works are The Neckveins of Winter, The Alchemy of Glory, and various articles in scholarly venues. He is an anthologized poet in Arabic and in English. Dr. Ajami is also a singer and composer of Arabic music. His website is www.mansourajami.com

Assef Al-Jundi is a native of Syria. His poems have appeared in anthologies and periodicals, such as Chance of a Ghost (edited by Gloria Vando and Philip Miller), Poetic Voices Without Borders (edited by Robert L. Giron), Inheritance of Light (edited by Ray Gonzalez), The Spaces Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, Poets of the Lake, Our Own Clues: Poets of the Lake 2 (edited by Naomi Shihab-Nye), Mizna, Sulphur River, Cat’s Ear, and The San Antonio Express-news. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Deborah Najor Alkamano works as a full-time tenured faculty member of the English department at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan where she teaches composition, creative writing, business & technical writing; in addition, she designed a research course that focuses on Middle Eastern identities in the Diasporas. Her short story publications include Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Forkroads. Besides many academic committees, Alkamano stays active in Michigan’s diverse Arab communities including the Arab American National Museum and the Center for Arab American Studies. She is the current secretary for RAWI.

Dr. Layla Al Maleh is an associate Professor of English literature currently employed by Kuwait University. Her main area of interest is Anglophone Arab Literature and its contribution to World Literature in English. Her Ph.D. dissertation "The English Novel by Arab Writers: 1910-1970) " (1980, University of London, King's College) traced the works of the early Arab Americans as well as those of Atiya, Jabra, Ghali, Alameddine, Diqs among others. She is currently working on an anthology of Anglophone Arab Writing. An edited volume of critical essays on the same subject is forthcoming. Dr.Al Maleh is recipient of the prestigious Arab Fund Outstanding Scholar Award, 2004-2005, a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapell Hill, 2004-2005. She taught at several Arab and American universities.

Wafaa' Al-Natheema is an Iraqi-American poet, writer, translator and an independent researcher. Among the current research she has been conducting are in the field of Arab women musicians in pre and medieval Islam as well as on the history of Iraq's leaders. She published her first poetry book, Untamed Nostalgia -- Wild Poems in 2004 and produced Halamanteeshi, a CD of songs and poems in 2005. Currently, she is writing a book on the history of symphonic music in IRAQ and producing a documentary entitled, The Other Arabs Al-Natheema is the founder of the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies, a non-profit organization in Cambridge, MA www.INEAS.org

Alise Alousi is an Iraqi-American poet. Her work has been published in the journals Dispatch Detroit, Alternative Press, Graffiti Rag and The Monthly Review among others, as well as in the anthologies: Abandon Automobile, Poets Against War, and I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You. She has worked with children and teens for over fifteen years, most recently as a writer - in - residence in the Detroit Public Schools through the Inside/ Out Literary Arts Project.

Evelyn Alsultany recently completed her Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. She is currently a Research Investigator at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she is working on her book manuscript, tentatively entitled, The Changing Profile of Race in the United States: Representations of Arab- and Muslim- Americans in the Media Post-9/11.  She is co-editor with Rabab Abdulhadi and Nadine Naber of the Spring 2005 special issue of the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies on Arab American Feminisms and is co-editing a book with Ella Shohat on the cultural politics of the Middle East in the Americas. In the fall of 2006, she will be an Assistant Professor in the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she will teach courses in Arab American Studies and Race and the Media. In addition to her academic work, Alsultany also writes short stories and plays. She is working on developing her play, “Depending on Which Faction of the Hernandez Family You Consult, Either of the Following Occurred,” which is loosely based on her Arab and Latino family.

Fatma Assef, an Egyptian Visiting Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the American Studies Department at George Washington University, did her dissertation on the construction of the feminine identity of Arab American women poets. In Egypt, she is an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, English Department, University of Alexandria where she teaches reading, writing, and poetry. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. Fatma Saleh Assef is an Egyptian Fulbright Visiting Scholar at George Washington University and is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled The Construction of the Feminine Identity in the Writings of Arab American Women Poets. In Egypt, she works as an Assistant Lecturer at the English Department, Faculty of Arts, at University of Alexandria. She arrived in the United States in August 2005 and is interested in the poetry produced by American women of Arab descent.

Barbara Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist; her PhD is in Social Anthropology from U. London, England. For 18 years, Aziz focused her training, passion, and curiosity on Tibetan and Himalayan society, literature, and history, publishing several books and hundreds of articles based on research in that period.  For the past 18 years, Aziz has been committed to highlighting voices and accomplishments of her own Arab peoples and history. Aziz is a proud activist journalist, firm in her conviction that "everything is political". This view stems from her study of 'orientialism' and the history of British and American Anthropology. Aziz writes and broadcasts a great deal about Iraq. Author of numerous, widely published articles on our Iraqis and Palestinians, she has also produced an unparalleled body of radio productions on those subjects. Aziz is a veteran producer and radio host at Pacifica-WBAI-NY (www.wbai.org) where she also trains young Arab women and men in radio journalism. A major feature of her radio work is Aziz's interviews with Arab writers. Completing her directorship of RAWI in 2005, Aziz now concentrates on radio productions. Her new web page, www.RadioTahrir.org, is heavy on the literary side. RadioTahrir.org also posts rare interviews from Iraq, a blog, reviews, and new articles by Aziz and others. Send submissions to aziz (at) wbai.org or info (at) RadioTahrir.org.

Ibtisam Barakat, MS-J and MA-HDFS, is an award-winning, Palestinian-American writer, poet, and educator. Her work centers on healing the hurts of racism, sexism, and the oppression of young people. In 2001, Ibtisam was a delegate to the UN conference on ending racism held in South Africa. She has taught Writing Ethics at Stephens College and is the founder of Write Your Life seminars. Her publications include Alphabets of My life, www.meenamag.com (2005), Piano Obsession, in What A Song Can Do(2004), Ramallah Then and Now, (2002), Beating A Bully, in 25 Read Alouds for Teaching Powerful Writing ( 2001), and Why I Write (Mizna, 2000 & Jump Start Performance Company, 2002). Her book Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2007). For speaking or workshops engagements, contact her at i_barakat(at)yahoo.com

Hani Bawardi received an M.A. in American Studies and B.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Flint and is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Wayne State University. He has deposited an archival collection at U-M's F.W. Thompson Library in the Genessee Special Collections. His research interests include Arab-black race relations, researched extensively his master’s thesis: "Arab Immigrants in Flint, Michigan: the case of the merchants in the inner city." Currently, he is tracing Syrian/Arab political organizations from 1915-1951. Presentations include Arab American literary history and press, transnational political identity and Arab Americans, reconstructing the lives of key women in Flint, Michigan through oral histories and research. I teach the modern and 20th century Middle East, Islamic civilizations, and have developed a repertoire of three courses on Arab American history and experiences.
Currently, he is a lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern and Asian Studies at Wayne State University.

Barbara Bedway, the recipient of a Pushcart Prize in fiction for her short story, Death and Lebanon, has published both fiction and essays in the Iowa Review, The New York Times, and literary magazines including Mizna and Flyway's special issue on Arab American writing. Her short story Letters from Baghdad was included in the anthology On the Wings of Peace, published by Clarion Books. For several years her series of food-related essays--with recipes--appeared in Ohio Magazine. She has taught creative writing at Marymount and St. Thomas Aquinas colleges.

Moulouk Berry obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in Near Eastern Studies/Islamic Studies. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University Michigan Dearborn in modern and classical languages. To her credit are several articles, presentations, and awards. Her publications include Teaching Scriptural texts in the Classroom: the Question of Gender in MIT EJMES, The Women’s Right to Occupy Position of Judge in Muslim Shi`i Law in Law Review UFD and Revisiting Notions of Sexuality in Contemporary Lebanese Muslim Shi`i Legal Writings (forthcoming, Hawwa), and Lebanon, a chapter in the World Mark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices (forthcoming). She has presented in a number of national and international conferences on Islam, law, gender, religion, Arab Americans, and Islam in America. She is the recipient of the Graduate Student Instructor Award from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. She served on a number of boards and committees including chairing the Women’s Studies Advisory Board at UMD (2003). In addition to her academic work, Berry writes fiction and poetry in English and Arabic. She is fluent in Arabic, English, and French and possesses a working knowledge of German and Persian.

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán was born in 1974 on El Día de la Madre in the South Bronx. He received his B.A. in Women Studies from San Francisco State University and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College, and is currently a Dean's Recruitment Fellow at Michigan State University where he is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies. Bodhrán is a Comparative Ethnic Studies scholar and teacher working at the intersection of Indigenous Studies, Women of Color Studies, and Queer People of Color Studies, methodologically informed by the fields of Literary Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and History/Herstory. He has presented his critical work at numerous national conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s), Modern Language Association, Native American Literature Symposium, and Sovereignty Matters. As an instructor, Bodhrán designs innovative curricula that are technologically and rhetorically sophisticated, composing-intensive, and integrative of decolonial, womanist, multimedia, creative writing, and activist pedagogies. He has taught a Hawai'ian Studies course, a Chicana Rhetorics course, three courses focusing on Women of Color Essayists, two courses on Native American and Pacific Islander Novels, and two Decolonial Poetics courses. Bodhrán's award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in over seventy publications, and he has given over one hundred public readings. Currently editing a transnational queer people of color anthology, he is completing his first book, Yerbabuena/Mala yerba, All My Roots Need Rain: mixed blood poetry & prose. www.msu.edu/~bodhran

Elizabeth Boosahda’s recent work includes Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community. The author, a third-generation Arab American, draws on nearly two hundred personal interviews, over one hundred pre-1920 photographs (83 of which appear in the book), and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved. Elizabeth Boosahda is an independent scholar and writer in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a longtime participant in many Arab-American communities, she brings firsthand knowledge of Arab-American customs, traditions, and values to this book. www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/booara.html

Born in Jerusalem, Palestine, where he was first educated and taught high school, Issa J. Boullata graduated with a B.A. (Honors) in 1964 and a Ph.D. in Arabic literature from the University of London in 1969. He taught at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut (1968-1975), then joined McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1975 as professor of Arabic literature and language at its Institute of Islamic Studies. He retired on January 1, 1999. His Arabic novel, c }'id il~ al-Quds (Homecoming to Jerusalem) was published in Beirut in 1998 and he has published several short stories in English. He published Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's letters to him (Beirut: 2001) and a book on Jabra (Beirut: 2002) entitled Nafidha `ala al-Hadatha (Window on Modernism). He followed this with a book of his own literary essays on modern Arabic literature entitled Sakhr wa Hafna min Turab (Beirut: 2005). He also edited a book entitled Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur'~n (London: Curzon Press, 2000).

Leila Buck grew up in Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Canada and the U.S. as a Lebanese-American diplomat’s daughter. Her award-winning one-woman show, ISite, has toured the U.S., China and Europe and with her poetry and prose has featured in the NY Times, The Key Magazine, Mizna and an upcoming anthology edited by Nathalie Handal. Leila performed in and co-edited Sajjil (Record), the award-winning debut production of Nibras Arab-American Theater Collective, of which she is a founding member. She teaches playwriting and drama for cross-cultural education, conflict resolution and literacy to teachers and students at conferences, universities and schools across the U.S. and Europe. This month Leila presented on Brian Lehrer Live and at the UN conference on the status of women. She has been a teaching artist for Creative Arts Team, storyteller at the Children's Museum of Manhattan and NY’s Museum of Natural History and directed readings of excerpts from Arabic plays in translation at the City University of NY. Leila holds a B.A. in Theater from Wesleyan University and is pursuing her Master's in Drama for Education about the Arab World at NYU. Current projects include a collaborative theater project by and about Arab women and a new play on language and memory.

Hayan Charara is the author of two poetry books, The Alchemist's Diary (Hanging Loose 2001) and The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon 2006). His poetry has appeared in such publications as The Birmingham Poetry Review, Chelsea, The Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Press, and the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation, Poetry 30, and Present Tense: Poets in the World. Born in Detroit, in 1972, he lived in New York City for many years and now makes his home in Texas.

Miriam Cooke is Professor of Arabic literature and culture at Duke University and past president of the Association of Middle Eastern Women's Studies. Her first book explores the life of Yahya Haqqi, one of Egypt's leading writers of the 20th century. Subsequently, her writings focused on the intersection of gender and war in modern Arabic literature and Arab women writers' constructions of Islamic feminism. Most recently, she has become interested in Arab cultural studies and the networked connections among Arabs and Muslims around the world. She is the author of War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War; Women and the War Story, and Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature. She has co-edited several volumes: Opening the Gates. A Century of Arab Feminist Writing; Gendering War Talk; Blood into Ink: 20th Century South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War; Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop. She has also published a novel, Hayati, My Life, and her forthcoming book is Humanity's Highest Need: Cultural Production in 1990s Syria from Duke University Press (2007).

Shaw J. Dallal, (J.D. Cornell University). Professor Dallal taught comparative Middle East Politics, the Arab Israeli Conflict, the Middle East and the global political economy, which he instituted for the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He also taught Islamic Culture and Civilization in the Honors Program of Syracuse University. He is a Professor of Arabic, Middle East Studies and Islamic Jurisprudence at Colgate University. An international lawyer and scholar, he has served as the chief legal advisor for the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) in Kuwait. He has authored numerous law publications as well as articles in the field of political science pertaining to the Middle East. He is a novelist and has authored several short stories. His most recently published novel, Scattered Like Seeds, is a historical novel that chronicles the intersection of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the life experience of a first generation immigrant. His second novel is under publication. sdallal(at)mail.colgate.edu

Susan Muaddi Darraj is Associate Professor of English at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland. She is the editor of Scheherazade's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing (Praeger, 2004), and the Managing Editor of The Baltimore Review. Her essays and fiction have appeared in anthologies such as Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Feminism (Seal Press) and Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (Northeastern University Press), and Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction (University of Arkansas Press). Her collection of short stories, The Inheritance of Exile, was a finalist in AWP Award Series in Short Fiction. Her website is www.SusanMuaddiDarraj.com.

Yvonne Wakim Dennis is a Syrian American/Cherokee First Nations author, curriculum developer, social worker and multicultural consultant living in New York City and Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.  Most of Dennis' award-winning books have been creative non-fiction about contemporary American Indian life that seek to dispel stereotypes about Native peoples. Children of Native America Today (2004) received distinction as a 2004 Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association. It was also featured at the Kennedy Center Multicultural Book Fair and the Cooperative Children's Book Center as an outstanding multicultural book.  Other publications include Children of the US (2007); Sequoyah (2004); Children of NA Today Resource Guide (2004); Native Americans Today (2000); American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and Bibliography (1999); New York City Guide to Teaching About American Indians (1991) as well as magazine articles. A member of Bank Street College Writers Lab and Nitchen, Inc. Women's Power Time, Dennis' current projects include a children's book highlighting all the different ceremonials practiced in the United States, 3 children's novels focusing on the environment and kids of color and a book of short stories about Native American New York City women. She is the founder and coordinator of the Family Awareness Network, a holistic/preventative mental health program for urban American Indian families. As a multicultural consultant, Dennis has advised corporations, publishers, schools, universities, community organizations, and state and federal government agencies.

Nihad Dukhan was born in 1964 in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, and arrived in Toledo, Ohio in August 1983.  He received his Ph.D. in 1996 in mechanical engineering from the University of Toledo.   He worked in Chicago for three years, at the University of Puerto Rico- Mayaguez for four years, and is currently an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy. His interest in Arabic calligraphy began when in the sixth grade. In 1998, he became a student of the noted Istanbul master calligrapher Hasan Celibi in Thuluth and Naskh styles.  His modern designs are highly stylized, but remain legible with tremendous simplicity.  Dukhan started pursuing, and refining this form of the art around 1989.  His work has been exhibited in major US cities, and sold in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. His commissioned designs include wedding invitations, book covers, CD jackets, company logos and others. Dukhan is active in promoting Arabic calligraphy and increasing people's awareness of it through lectures and workshops.  His intent is not only to attract the Arabic speaking audience, but to cross barriers and touch other languages and cultures.  He invites you to his web site at www.ndukhan.com.  

Amani Elkassabani is a writer and a teacher. Her short fiction has appeared in Azizah Magazine, MIZNA: Poetry, Prose and Art Exploring Arab America, and Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan (Interlink Books, 2005). Her fiction is forthcoming in Arab American and Arab Anglophone Literature (Interlink Books) and Women’s Lives (McGraw Hill). Amani is the recipient of the 2004 RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers) Creative Prose Prize. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Rockville, Maryland, where she is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Maha El Said is an associate professor of American poetry at Cairo University with a special interest in Arab American writings. Her Ph D dissertation, completed in 1997, was the first full length study of Arab American poetry. She was the first to introduce the teaching of Arab American poetry at Cairo University. Dr. El Said has publications on Arab American writings post 9/11, the Arab Diasporas, popular culture, creative writing, and the impact of new technologies on literature. She is a member of the Women and Memory Forum: re-writing of fairytales project, the Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities, and many English language professional groups. melsaid(at)link.net

Amira EL-Zein is a published poet in Arabic and in French with two collections of poetry: The Book of Palm Trees and Bedouins of Hell.  Her last book of poetry, The Jinn and Other Poems has just been published by Arrowsmith Publishers in Cambridge, Boston, MA. She is also a translator. Her translation of the Palestinian poet, Mahmud Darwish, Unfortunately It Was Paradis, with three other translators was finalist at the Penn International Prize for translation in 2004. Amira has published and lectured extensively in Arabic, French, and English on topics ranging from medieval and modern Arabic thought, to Francophone literature, to comparative mysticism, and comparative folklore. She has a forthcoming scholarly book entitled: Jinn among Humans in Classical Islam: The Hidden & the Manifest which will be published very soon by Syracuse University Press.     El-Zein is currently the director of the Arabic Program at Tufts University where she teaches courses in Arabic literature and Arabic culture.

Noura Erakat is currently a New Voices fellow working on grassroots activism and a legal project using American laws to give Palestinians recourse against Israeli military officials. She graduated from UC-Berkeley's school of law in 2005. She has written poetry for Mizna and other publications, an article for the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, and delivered a paper at the 2005 Middle East Studies Association conference. She wrote and directed a revolving monologue entitled "Pulse of the Intifada," which was performed in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Berkeley. She produced an award-winning radio documentary, "We Refuse to Forget: Commemorating the 20-Year Anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre."

Carol N. Fadda-Conrey is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature at Purdue University. She grew up in Beirut, Lebanon where she earned her B.A. and M.A. from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include Arab-American studies, ethnic and postcolonial literatures, and women's literature. She is currently completing a dissertation focusing on Arab-American literature entitled "Racially White But Culturally Colored: Defining Contemporary Arab-American Literature and its Transnational Connections." Fadda-Conrey has been teaching a variety of literature and composition courses in the English Department at Purdue University since August 2000, and she is the recipient of Purdue's Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship for 2005-2006. Her published work includes critical essays in Al-Jadid, Modern Fiction Studies, Sycamore Review, and Studies in the Humanities.

Maymanah Farhat, editor of Artenews (www.arteeast.org/artenews/arteeast-artenews.html) , received her B.A. in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of California, with an emphasis in non-western visual culture. A freelance writer and researcher of visual arts, she is based in New York and Beirut. Farhat has published numerous articles on Contemporary Arab art and has been citied as a substantial resource on Arab visual culture in several publications. She has conducted extensive research in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the United States on the trends and evolution of Modern and Contemporary Arab art.  Some of her most recent research and academic writings include: The Iconography of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the Visual Culture of Hezbollah, the dedication of Palestinian artists and visual culture to the self determined movement of the Palestinian people and the impact of the Civil War and Israeli Occupation of Lebanon on the development of Lebanese art.  In June 2006, Farhat will curate the art exhibition Three Arab Painters in New York: Samia Halaby, Sumayyah Samaha, and Athir Shayota at the Bridge Gallery in Chelsea. 

Simone Fattal came to the U.S . from Beirut, driven away by the Civil Warin Lebanon. Instead of resuming her practice as a painter, she founded a Publishing house in 1982, The Post-Apollo press, dedicated to publishing innovative and experimental writing. ( Her website is www.postapollopress.com ). Once the Press was established she resumed her work as an artist this time choosing the Ceramic Sculpture medium. She has had many shows, in Paris in 2003, and Beirut and was part of the Forces of Change exhibit which toured the U.S. in 93/94.

John Fiscella collaborates on performance projects, teaches, and freelances as an editor. His recent directing work includes The Error, adapted from a short play by novelist Adania Shibli, and Persimmons adapted from a story by Amani Elkassabani. His family came to the U.S. from the south of Lebanon and from Sicily. janthony26(at)earthlink.net

Nada Sneige Fuleihan is a teacher and writer living on the Connecticut Shoreline with her husband and three daughters. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, she studied in French and Arabic throughout school then switched to English when joining the American University of Beirut. She holds a B.A. in History and Education, and a Masters in Middle-Eastern History. Since moving to the United States she has been motivated by the severe lack of knowledge about the Middle-Eastern and Arab culture in this country. Committed to education and the need to fill this gap, she has been teaching French language and French colonial influence in the Arab world, at the elementary, middle, and high school level. After completing a writing program at the Institute of Children’s Literature in Connecticut, she has been writing historical fiction and non-fiction for middle grades and young adult readers. Inspired from a Sufi folktale, her first published story for ages 9-14 years, “A Challenge in Constantinople” appeared in Cricket Magazine in September 2005. She is now working on a series of short stories on the civil war in Lebanon for young adults and on a non-fiction history of the sugar cane for ages 9-14. Contact her at this email: nadeige(at)mac.com

Joe Geha is the author of Through and Through: Toledo Stories (Graywolf, 1990). His short stories, poems, essays, and plays have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies including Epoch, The Northwest Review, The Quarterly, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Growing Up Ethnic in America, and American Mosaic. He has received a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Award; his work has been included in the Arab-American Collection of the Smithsonian Institution. He is Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University.

Hedy Habra (born Sabbagh) is a poet and essayist of Lebanese origin. She was born in Heliopolis, Egypt and has lived in both countries. She received a B.S. in Pharmacy from the Faculté Française de Médecine et de Pharmacie of Beirut. After residing several years in Brussels she came to Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has earned an M.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Spanish Literature as well as an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. She teaches Spanish at WMU where she is completing her Ph.D. in Spanish Literature. Her creative writing and critical studies have appeared in numerous literary magazines.Her poetry manuscript, Tea in Heliopolis, is under consideration, and she is currently working on a collection of short stories.
www.hedyhabra.com

Kathryn Haddad is the cofounder and executive director of Mizna, an organization dedicated to promoting the cultural expression of Arab Americans. She has Master’s Degrees in Liberal Studies and Public Affairs from the University of Minnesota and her creative writing has appeared in various publications. Kathryn is a former board member of S.A.S.E.—the Write Place, a cofounder and former Executive Director of Pangea World Theater, a former chapter president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Minnesota chapter and has delivered lectures on Arab American art throughout the country. She is the recipient of awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Loft Literary Center, the Playwright’s Center, and the recipient of a 2004-05 Bush Leadership Fellowship.

Marian Haddad, M.F.A, is a poet, essayist, visiting writer, manuscript editor and consultant, and creative writing workshop instructor. Her works have been published in various journals and periodicals including The Texas Observer, The Rio Grande Review, and Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders. Her poems and essays have appeared in anthologies including Stories from Where We Live: The California Coast (Milkweed Editions); Is This Forever or What: Poems & Paintings from Texas (Greenwillow Books); Scheherazade’s Legacy: Arab and Arab-American Women on Writing (Praeger) and are forthcoming in Arab-American and Diaspora Literature (Interlink); Pride of Place (University of North Texas Press); and More Texas Skies (University of Texas Press). Her chapbook, Saturn Falling Down, was compiled under the request of Texas Public Radio in correlation with their Hands-On Poetry Workshops and printed in April 2003 as a limited edition. Her first full-length collection of poems, Somewhere between Mexico and a River Called Home was published in July 2004 by Pecan Grove Press. She is available for readings, panels, workshop instruction and presentations. Reach her at Haddadmarian(at)aol.com. www.marianhaddad.com

Laila Halaby is a writer of novels, poetry, short stories, and children’s fiction. Her forthcoming novel, tentatively titled Once in a Promised Land, will be published in Fall 2006 by Beacon Press. Her first novel, West of the Jordan, was published by Beacon Press, 2003, and received a PEN Beyond Margins Award. She was born in Lebanon to a Jordanian father and American mother. Her education includes a B.A. in Italian and Arabic, with a French Minor, from Washington University, a Fulbright scholarship to Jordan, an M.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA, and an M.A. in School Counseling. She currently lives with her family in Tucson, Arizona.

Zeineb Hamdan is a Marquette University senior majoring in Clinical Laboratory Science and minoring in English Literature. She is a Palestinian American with high aspirations to return to school after graduation to study Literature so that she can one day become an Arab-American Writer and professor of Arabic Literature.

Suheir Hammad is the author of Born Palestinian, Born Black, Drops of This Story, and her latest poetry collection Zaatar Diva. Suheir is an original writer and cast member of the TONY Award winning Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, as well as a series regular of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Her writing has received numerous awards and in 2005 she was named a Sistah of Fire by the Women of Color Resource Center. www.suheirhammad.com

Ray Hanania is an award winning journalist, author and standup comedian. Hanania began in journalism in 1976 covering Chicago's City Hall through 1992, working mainly with the Chicago Sun-Times. He is also the former publisher of two Arab American newspapers, and the author of several books that include the humor book I'm Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing Up Arab in America, and Arabs of Chicagoland which explores the settlement of Arabs in the Chicago area beginning in the 1860s. Humor has always been a part of Hanania's writing and in November 2001, he entered standup comedy performing at the country's top clubs and for events across the country. In August 2002, he was prevented from performing at Zanies Comedy Club when Jewish comedian complained about Hanania's Palestinian heritage. Today, Hanania writes a syndicated column that appears in many American newspapers including Newsday, The Orlando Sentinel, Arlington Heights Daily Herald, the Dallas Morning News, the Arab American News in Dearborn, The Arab News in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and Yedioth Ahronoth's English language web site, YnetNews.com. He is a political and humor columnist for the Southwest News-Herald in Chicago. Hanania can be reached through his web site at www.hanania.com

Nathalie Handal is a poet, writer, and playwright. She has lived in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines/literary reviews and she has been featured on NPR, KPFK, and PBS Radio. Handal’s plays have been produced worldwide, most recently, Between Our Lips premiered at The Blue Heron Theatre and The Details of Silence at Symphony Space in New York. She has also directed several plays, namely, Grenade by Yussef El Guindi and Maysoon Zayid's Hi! Joan. She is the author of Traveling Rooms (Poetry CD-improvisational music by Russian musicians, Vladimir Miller and Alexandr Alexandrov, ASC Records, UK), The NeverField (poetry book), and most recently the poetry CD, Spell (music by Egyptian musician Will Soliman), and The Lives of Rain which was shortlisted for The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/The Pitt Poetry Series. Handal is the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets Bestseller and Winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, and she is presently editing Arab American and Arab Anglophone Literature (forthcoming) and co-editing along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, Contemporary Poetry of the Eastern World (forthcoming). She is Poetry Books Review Editor for Sable (UK), a member of Nibras Theatre Collective and Associate Artist and Development Executive for the production company, The Kazbah Project (currently working on the feature film, Gibran). She teaches at Columbia University. www.nathaliehandal.com

Yasmeen Hanoosh was born in Basra, Iraq, in 1978, and lived in Baghdad until 1995. She holds a B.A. in philosophy and religion and an M.A. in Arabic language and literature, both from the University of Michigan and will soon complete a Ph.D. in contemporary Arabic literature there. She is the translator of the Iraqi novel Scattered Crumbs by Muhsin al-Ramli.Zeineb Hamdan is a Marquette University senior majoring in Clinical Laboratory Science and minoring in English Literature. She is a Palestinian American with high aspirations to return to school after graduation to study Literature so that she can one day become an Arab-American Writer and professor of Arabic Literature.

Rosina Hassoun is a scholar and poet. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida, Gainesville. Her academic writing has focused on issues of health, environmental factors, and acculturation in Arab American populations. She has also written on ecological issues in the Middle East. Her recent publications include: a poem entitled, “The Accidental Hijacking,” published in Mizna in 2005and a monograph/book, Arab Americans in Michigan (Michigan State University Press, 2005). Rosina established one of the first, and now longest running courses, on Arab Americans taught at an American university (Michigan State University) as part of a series of courses in Integrative Arts and Humanities on Multiculturalism and Civilization: The Americas : IAH211C: Focus on Arab Americans.

Maysa Abou-Youssef Hayward is an Associate Professor of English at Ocean College in Toms River, New Jersey. A native of Egypt, she received her B.A. in English from Cairo University and an M.A. in Linguistics from the American University in Cairo. After teaching English for eight years for Cairo University’s Faculty of Education, she moved to the U.S. in 1992. She received her Ph.D. in English in 1997 from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with a specialization in translation studies and Arabic literature in translation. She has taught for Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and, since January 2004 for Ocean College, where she was hired to initiate and direct a Middle Eastern Studies Program. Among her courses at Ocean College are Arabic Literature in Translation, Women’s Literature, and World Literature. Her publications and presentations are in the areas of translation theory, Arab environmental writing, gender issues in Arab and Arab-American writing, and issues of identity and hybridity in Middle Eastern literature.

Jennifer Heath is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam (Paulist Press), Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate (Pomegranate Artbooks), A House White with Sorrow: A Ballad for Afghanistan (Roden Press), On the Edge of Dream: The Women of Celtic Myth and Legend (Penguin/Putnam), and The Echoing Green: The Garden in Myth and Memoir (Penguin/Putnam). Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including recently, Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes (Hudson Street Press) and Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Continuum). Forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2007: The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore and Politics. She came of age in Afghanistan, and is the founder of Seeds for Afghanistan and the Afghanistan Relief Organization Midwife Training and Infant Care Program.

Dima Hilal is a poet and writer, born in Beirut and raised in California, where she studied at the University of California at Berkeley. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Mizna and Orion Magazine. Her writing has been anthologized in The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (Interlink Books, 2001) and Scheherezade's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing (Praeger, 2004), among others. She has been featured at the Beyond Baroque Cultural Center, World Stage, Levantine Cultural Center, Autry Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at the Alexandria Library in Egypt. Her libretto was a finalist in the Words and Music Project, commissioned by the Oakland East Bay Symphony. She has taught poetry workshops and given lectures on issues of identity, culture and community in contemporary Arab poetry. Hilal currently resides in Dana Point, California, where she is working on a collection of poetry. For more information, visit www.dimahilal.com

Heather Hoyt develops and teaches courses on Arab and Arab American literature at Arizona State University. Her dissertation is on Arab American women writers and the construction of Arab, Muslim, and American identities in their texts. Heather has presented on her research and teaching at several conferences including the first RAWI conference, "Kallimuna--Speak to Us" in 2005 and the Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA conference, which featured a new Area, "Arab Culture in the US" in 2006. She has contributed to the RAWI Newsletter and written reviews of young adult literature with Arab and Islamic themes. Her work also includes reviewing and editing manuscripts for academic publishers, facilitating reading groups on Arab American texts, and speaking to community organizations about Arab and Arab American women's literature.

Poet, critic, literary historian, anthologist, and founder and director of East-West Nexus/PROTA, the Project for the dissemination of Arabic literature and Arab/Islamic culture and history, Salma Khadra Jayyusi was born in East Jordan to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. She has many publications both in her capacity as poet and scholar and as director of her two projects under which she has many single author books and eleven large anthologies covering all literary genres in classical and modern Arabic literature. In 2002 she published her edited comprehensive book on human rights in Arabic thought. Human Rights in Arabic Thought is a 1500 page book in Arabic (forthcoming in English) detailing the history of the notion of human rights even as early as pre-Islamic times. Currently, she is working on several projects: The City in the Islamic World; The Classical Arabic Story: An Anthology; Studies in Classical Arabic Narratives; The Jocular Anecdotes: Juha as an example; and, The Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. Jayyusi has received eight awards the last two being The Edward Said Award for Career Excellence by the Arab/American Writers Organization and The Egyptian Higher Council for Culture's Award for "her efforts in disseminating Arabic Culture in the world."

Lawrence Joseph was born in Detroit in 1948. He attended the University of Michigan, where he received the major Hopwood Award for poetry. He is the author of five books of poems: Into It, Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993, Before Our Eyes, Curriculum Vitae and Shouting at No One, which received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. He is also the author of Lawyerland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), a book of prose, which is being developed into a film by John Malkovich. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the New York County Lawyers Association's "Law and Literature Award" (the third recipient with Louis Auchincloss and Louis Begley.) Joseph graduated from the University of Michigan Law School. As a distinguished scholar in labor and employment law, tort and compensation law, and legal theory, he is the Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law. Married to the painter Nancy Van Goethem, he lives in downtown Manhattan.

Suad Joseph received her PhD from Columbia University 1975 in Anthropology. She specializes in women and gender in the Middle East; family and state systems; cultural constructions of self; children and youth; social networks; human rights discourses. Most of her research has been on her native Lebanon. She is General Editor of Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Volume I, II, III published, Vols IV-VI to be completed by 2007. She founded the Association for Middle East Women's Studies, was co-founder, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies; founder/Principle Investigator, Arab Families Working Group; founder/facilitator, American University in Beirut, American University in Cairo, Lebanese American University, University California, Bir Zeit University Collaborative Initiative.

Fady Joudah is a physician and field member of Doctors Without Borders. His poetry has received River City's 2004 award, and has appeared or will appear in Bellignham Review, Crab Orchard, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review, among others. His Translation volume of Mahmoud Darwish's most recent poetry (1998-2003), The Butterfly's Burden, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in the summer of 2006.

Poems by Damascus-born Mohja Kahf have been published in the Muslim women’s magazine Azizah, as well as in Banipal: A Magazine of Modern Arabic Literature, The Paris Review, The Paterson Review. Anthologies with Kahf poetry include Post-Gibran, The Space Between Our Footsteps, and Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak (ed. Fawzia Afzal-Khan). “Manar of Hama,” possibly the only short story on the Hama massacre in English, and a humorous story of domestic abuse (yes, it’s not pc, shuttup), “The Spiced Chicken Queen of Mickaweequah, Iowa” appear in Dinarzad’s Children: Arab American Fiction. You can find more Kahf fiction at her ‘Sex and the Ummah’ column at www.MuslimWakeUp.com, but only go there if your sensibilities are not easily offended by the mixing of erotic and spiritual themes.

Pauline Kaldas was born in Egypt and immigrated with her parents to the United States at the age of eight in 1969. She is the author of Egyptian Compass, a collection of poetry, Letters from Cairo, a travel memoir, and the co-editor of Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Mizna, Phoebe, Borderlands, The Poetry of Arab Women, Post-Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing, Cultural Activisms, and The Space Between Our Footsteps. She received her Ph.D. from Binghamton University and currently teaches at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Sahar Kayyal is a first generation Arab American and native of Chicago. She lived in El-Bireh, Palestine for five years during the 1987 Intifada, where she attended Friends Girls School in Ramallah. She currently lives in Illinois with her husband and two daughters, and teaches at a high school and local university. Her publications include a short story in Mizna and "Shakespeare in the Gaza Strip" in Dinarzad's Children: an anthology of contemporary Arab American fiction. She received First Prize in the RAWI Creative Prose Contest for "Virgins in Paradise" (2005).

Having lived, worked and studied in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Algeria, Russia, France, South Africa and Egypt, Rana Kazkaz has a strong knowledge of the challenges and possibilities of global exchange. She has earned a reputation as an actor-writer-producer with a passion for telling stories from the Middle East and Africa. Kazkaz is a founder of THE KAZBAH PROJECT, a production company that "delivers stories of a growing global community" and a member of NIBRAS, Arab American Theater Collective.
Currently, Kazkaz is developing a feature film about Kahlil Gibran. The screenplay, GIBRAN, was Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival, All Access (2005) program. And just recently Kazkaz returned from Jordan, where her screenplay was selected to participate in the First Middle East Screenwriter Lab (2005), organized by the Royal Film Commission in association with the Sundance Institute. Kazkaz completed her MFA in Acting at Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theater and received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in Theatre & Russian Language/Literature.

Ghada Kanafani is Palestinian, born in Lebanon in 1948. She received her Masters Degree in philosophy from the Lebanese University in Beirut. She immigrated to the United States in 1985. The hardships and trauma of displacement prevented Kanafani from writing for many years. But at last she began writing both in English and Arabic. A Life in Pencil, a book of poems was published in July 2005. ghada@ghadakanafani.com.

Yousef Khanfar is a Palestinian photographer, poet, and a thinker who was born and raised in Kuwait. Photography was his escape and his voice. In 2000, Yousef published his first book Voices of Light. In 2003, Yousef was listed as one of the World's Top Photographers by RotoVision in London among only 38 photographers. He has been featured in many magazines including Oprah, Photo Art, Oklahoma Today, Amateur Photographer, Persimmon Hill, Photo Life, Outdoor Photographer, and Nature's Best. His art has been exhibited and collected worldwide and included in the permanent collection of the International Photography Hall of Fame. In 2006, Yousef published his second book In Search of Peace.

Yahia S. Lababidi will be included in an Encyclopedia of World's Best Aphorists, 2007, by James Geary  Sun Rising Books will publish Yahia Lababidi's book of aphorisms, Signposts to Elsewhere, which has already garnered generous reviews from major US poets.  Signposts, out August, 2006 is already available for pre-order: Visit www.sun-rising-poetry.com/signposts.htm Thebook's illustrations will be provided courtesy of Kuwaiti artist Ghadah Al-Kandari,whose work can be viewed at: www.ghadahalkandari.com

Laila Lalami was born in Rabat, and educated in Morocco, Britain, and the United States. Her work has appeared in Mizna, The Baltimore Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Oregonian, The Boston Globe, and The Nation. Her debut book of fiction, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in October 2005. She is also the editor of the book and culture blog Moorishgirl.com.

Angela Tehaan Leone, third generation Lebanese, has published poetry, short fiction, and essays, and has completed a novel set in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s about a conflict between a traditional Lebanese mother and her musically gifted daughter. The novel is currently under review by a university press. Angela plans to make her first visit to Beirut and Tripoli, Lebanon-- the birthplace of her grandparents in August of 2006.

Lisa Suhair Majaj, born in Iowa to a Palestinian father and an American mother, spent her childhood years in Jordan and was educated at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and the University of Michigan. After many years in the US she has recently relocated to Cyprus. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies, including World Literature Today, South Atlantic Quarterly, Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, Literary Mama, The Poetry of Arab Women, Worlds in Our Words, The Space Between our Footsteps, Unrooted Childhoods, and Dance the Guns to Silence, as well as in the chapbooks These Words and What She Said (available from palestineonlinestore.com). Her critical articles on Arab-American literature have appeared in Post-Gibran, Arabs in America, Postcolonial Theory and the United States, Al-Jadid, Forkroads, Memory and Cultural Politics, Aramco World Magazine and elsewhere. She has also co-edited three volumes of critical essays: Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist, and Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels. She may be reached at lmajaj(at)cytanet.com.cy

Ambassador Clovis Maksoud, a lawyer, journalist and diplomat, is presently a Professor of International Law in the Washington College of Law at American University. Prof. Maksoud is also the Director of the Center for the Global South at American University and a member of the Advisory Group of the United Nations Development Program. A Lebanese national, Ambassador Maksoud was the Chief Representative of the League of Arab States in India from 1961-1966. From 1967-1979, he served as the Senior Editor of Al-Ahram and then Chief Editor of Al-Nahar Weekly. Prof. Maksoud is the author of many articles and books on the Middle East and the global south, among them: "The Meaning of Non Alignment", "The Crisis of the Arab Left", "Reflections on Afro-Asianism", and "The Arab Image", just to list a few. He has also been the Chairperson and Convener of many conferences on the environment and development, human rights, human security, landmines, population and disarmament.

Khaled Mattawa was born in 1964 in Benghazi, Libya, where he had his primary education. In 1979 he immigrated to the United States. He is the author of two books of poems Zodiac of Echoes and Ismailia Eclipse. Mattawa has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and two Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in numerous American journals and had been translated to French and Polish. Mattawa is also the translator of five volumes of Arabic poetry, and co-editor of two anthologies of Arab American literature. He is an assistant professor of English and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker Anisa Mehdi covers religion and the arts. She negotiated privileged access to the holy city for her National Geographic documentary “Inside Mecca” and is a commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Anisa teaches at Seton Hall University. www.anisamehdi.com

D. H. Melhem, Ph.D., whose recent collection is her seventh, New York Poems (Syracuse Univ. Press, 2005), is also the author of Conversation with a Stonemason; Country , a book-length poem sequence about the United States; and Rest in Love , a widely acclaimed elegy for her mother. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Lebanese immigrants, a lifelong resident of New York City where her two children were born and raised, her publications include a novel, Blight ; the groundbreaking critical studies Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice and Heroism in the New Black Poetry (both from the Univ. Press of Kentucky); a musical drama, Children of the House Afire , based on her poems about the West Side of Manhattan; over 60 essays; and two anthologies, one of which, A Different Path, co-edited with Leila Diab, is the first RAWI anthology. Her Notes on 94th Street is the first poetry book in English by an Arab American woman and was proposed by Gwendolyn Brooks for a Pulitzer Prize. Among Melhem's numerous awards for poetry and prose are a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and an American Book Award for Heroism in the New Black Poetry. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, she has received a Ph.D. Alumni Association Special Achievement Award from the City University of New York and a writer's fellowship from the Fondation Ledig-Rowohlt in Lausanne, Switzerland. She serves as vice-president of the International Women's Writing Guild. www.dhmelhem.com

Philip Metres is a poet, scholar and a translator, whose work has appeared in numerous journals and in Best American Poetry (2002). His books include Primer for Non-Native Speakers (a chapbook, 2004), A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (2003), and Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (2004). He is an assistant professor of English at John Carroll University. If it weren't for Ellis Island, his last name would be Abourjaili. Check out www.philipmetres.com for more information.

Salwa Mikdadi is a Berkeley-based independent curator and art historian who writes on modern and contemporary art of the Arab world. Her work spans over twenty-five years of research on Arab art; her interests and essays include gender and politics in art, art by Arab Americans, transnational art, and museum visitor’s participation in art interpretation. In 1988 she founded one of the first initiatives to promote Arab art in the US, the non-profit Cultural and Visual Arts Resource/ICWA organizing symposiums, exhibitions, educational and visiting artists programs. She curated several exhibitions and conducted the ground-breaking research on Arab women artist which culminated in the award winning publication and largest touring exhibition of Arab art in the US Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World. She has also written and co-produced a video of interviews with women artists from the Arab World. She is the curator and author of the first exhibition and book on Arab American artists In/Visible: Contemporary Art by Arab Americans. Recently, Mikdadi contributed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History Web site, writing on the history of twentieth century contemporary art of West Asia, North Africa and Egypt. She is currently working in Jerusalem as a UNDP consultant for a future Palestinian art museum. Curator222-artnews@yahoo.com

Born in Iraq in 1965, Dunya Mikhail is famous for her subversive, innovative, and satirical poetry. She has published four collections of poetry in Arabic, including The Psalms of Absence, Diary of a Wave, Outside the Sea, and Almost Music and has had poems in many anthologies, including Le Poeme Arabe Moderne, Iraqi Poetry Today, The Post-Gibran Anthology of New Arab-American Writing, New Arab Poetry, and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology. She has also appeared in magazines such as Poetry International and Modern Poetry in Translation and recently had a poem published in the London Times as part of an article about the “art of war.” In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. Recently, her work The War Works Hard won PEN’s Translation Award. She has a master’s degree in Near Eastern studies from Wayne State University and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Baghdad. She is currently working as a director of the Iraqi American Center, a community-based nonprofit humanitarian organization and as a teacher of Arabic.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore was born in 1940 in Oakland, California. His first book of poems, Dawn Visions, was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, San Francisco, in 1964, and the second in 1972, Burnt Heart / An Ode to the War Dead. Living in Philadelphia since 1990, he published The Ramadan Sonnets and The Blind Beekeeper with Syracuse University Press. He has been the major editor for a number of works, including the Burdah of Imam Busiri, translated by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, and the poetry of Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. He is also widely published on the worldwide web: The American Muslim, DeenPort, and his own website: www.danielmoorepoetry.com, among others. In 2005, The Ecstatic Exchange Series is beginning to publish the large body of his poetic work, beginning with Mars & Beyond, Laughing Buddha, Weeping Sufi, and Salt Prayers, with a republication of a revised version of Ramadan Sonnets. Throughout 2006, new works of poetry will be published, God willing, beginning with Psalms for the Brokenhearted.

Nadine Naber is an assistant professor in the Program of American Culture and the Department of Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She conducts research and teaches courses in the area of Arab American Studies. Her first book in progress, De-Orientalizing Diaspora: Race, Gender and Cultural Identity among Arab American Youth, focuses on negotiations of identity among Arab American youth in San Francisco, California. Her current research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and focuses on shifts in racial formations among working class Arab Muslim immigrants in the aftermath of September 11th. She has co-edited a special issue of the MIT online Journal of Middle East Studies on Arab American Feminisms. She is co-editing an anthology, entitled, From Invisible Citizen to Visible Subject on Arab American engagements with "race" (under review, Syracuse University Press). She has published articles that situate Arab Americans in the context of Feminist Studies and U.S. Racial and Ethnic Studies in the Journal of Feminist Studies; The Muslim World, The Journal of Asian American Studies; "Ambiguous Insiders: An Investigation of Arab American Invisibility" in Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies; and Meridians: Race, Transnationalism, and Feminism. Nadine Naber serves on the advisory board of the Library at the Arab American National Museum and is a board member of INCITE (Women of Color against Violence), AMWAJ (Arab Women's Movement for Justice), and RAWAN (Radical Arab Women's Activist Network).

Gary Nabhan is from the al Hadr tribe known as the Banu Nabhan, which has its origins in Yemen, Oman, Syria and Lebanon. Most of his family became refugees from the Bekaa Valley a century ago, but he still visits the survivors there. He is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" award, a
Lannan Literary Fellowship, and John Burroughs Medal for nature writing for
his 20 books, many articles, poems and anthologies. He is currently
director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona
University, where his work on agricultural, linguistic and biological diversity have taken him to North Africa and the Middle East. He has served on the RAWI board, and is at work on a book comparing culture, community, and ecology in the deserts of the Old World and New World.

Nada Najjar is an Assistant Professor of English at Mountain State University, West Virginia. She was born in Lebanon and arrived in the United States in 1982 and is a US citizen. Najjar earned a Ph.D. from the University of Toledo in modern American literature with a special focus on the Ethnic literatures of the United States and a minor in English as a Second Language. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction and does free-lance writing, editing and translation (Arabic-English). Her memberships include the American Literature Association, Modern Language Association, National Council for Teachers of English, and Arab American University Graduates. nnajjar(at)mountainstate.edu

Taysir Nashif is a researcher, essayist, professor and translator. He wrote a number of poems both in English and Arabic. From the University of Jerusalem he earned a B.A. degree in Arabic and political science. From the University of Toronto, he earned an M.A. degree in Islamic studies. From the Univ. of NY at Binghamton he earned a Ph.D. degree in political science. He served as an assistant professor at the Dept. of Sociology, at the University of Oran, Algeria, and offered courses on Arabic culture at Essex County College and William Paterson University in NJ. He serves as associate professor of Arabic and Arabic culture at Mercer County College, NJ. In 1980-81 he served as a political affairs officer at the United Nations, NY. Between 1982 and 1996 he served as a deputy-chief of the UN Arabic Verbatim Reporting Section, serving, at the same time, as a translator, editor and reviser. In1996 he was promoted as chief of the Section. He is a member in a number of professional associations, including Radius of Arab Writers (RAWI), Middle East Studies Assocation, American Association of University Professors and Third World Studies Association. Recent publications include Al-Sulta wa-al-Fikr wa-al-Taghayyur al-Ijtimaa’ii (Authority, Thought and Social Change) and Al-Nashaat al-Fikrii wa-al-Taghayyur al-Ijtimaa’ii (Intellectual Activity and Social Change) in 2005.Frances Khirallah Noble was born and grew up in Southern California. She is the daughter of a Lebanese father and an Irish mother and grew up in her father's extended family in Los Angeles. Her publications include Missing (Mobius), The Situe Stories (2005 Syracuse University Press), Dinarzad's Children (anthology, University of Arkansas Press, 2003), and to be published, Academic Guidelines (Cambridge University Press, anthology, 2006). Noble is a lawyer and the recipient of a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship. She has been a visiting writer at Yaddo. She has taught elementary school, creative writing and reviewed fiction manuscripts for an academic press. She is married and has a son and a daughter.

Naomi Shihab Nye lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, photographer Michael Nye, and their son. Her recent books include You & Yours, Going Going, A Maze Me, 19 Varieties of Gazelle; Poems of the Middle East, Come with Me: Poems for a Journey, Fuel, Red Suitcase and Habibi, a novel for teens. Her picture books include Sitti's Secrets and Baby Radar. She has edited seven anthologies of poetry for young readers, including This Same Sky, The Tree is Older than You Are, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East, What Have You Lost?, and Salting the Ocean. She began writing and publishing poems as a child and has been a visiting writer all over the world since graduating from Trinity University. Her father, Aziz Shihab, was born and raised in Palestine, and her mother, Miriam Allwardt Shihab, grew up in the United States.

Micaela Raen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Creative Writing and has spent significant time in Palestine. She is a life member of RAWI and is an accomplished poet, essayist, and budding fiction writer. Her work explores the themes of violent cultural conflict, self-discovery, family and maternal appreciation, female oppression, lesbianism, and the struggle to create peace while attempting to redefine herself as Palestinian-American. She is dedicated to creating art that advocates peace, tolerance, compassion and positive social change within the Arab-American community and beyond.  She had been featured in several anthologies: A Different Path; The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology; and A Kiss is Just a Kiss. Her work has also appeared in Letters Magazine, Chronogram Arts Magazine, Ahbab Online, and Bint el Nas Magazine. She has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Market Online Global Writing Contest as well as First Place in Poetry & Third Place for Short Fiction by Chapman University’s Calliope Journal. She has been a featured poet in various New York cafes and art spaces, the Delaware Valley Literary Series, RAWI events, and recently was a panelist for the RAWI Literature Conference at Hunter College.

Kevin Rashid is a lifetime Detroiter and was for 19 years a groundskeeper at Wayne State University. Recently, he moved inside to become curriculum coordinator of Wayne State's Honors Program and administrator of university undergraduate research. He has taught creative writing at WSU, to the Poetry Club at Cass Tech High School (for Inside/Out) and at Detroit Southwest Mental Health's Outpatient Clinic (for The Writer's Voice). He's been published in several books and journals including The Academy of American Poet's New Voices1989-1998, Abandon Automobile: Detroit City 2001, The Maxis Review (2001 and 2002), and Arab Detroit: from Margins to Mainstream.

Jamal Rayyis is the author of five editions of Food & Wine Magazine's Wine Guide (2002-2006). His work has appeared in several magazines, including Food & Wine, Departures, Wine & Spirits, and Wine Enthusiast, as well as The New York Times, Fodors, and several internet publications. Jamal is currently at work on his first novel, based on family experiences during the genocide of Armenians during WWI. He is based in New York City.

Mamoun Sakkal is founder and principal of Sakkal Design in Bothell,
Washington, USA. Providing graphic design and communication solutions to
major corporations, his firm has focused on Arabic calligraphy and typography since the 1990’s. He is a well-respected typographer and calligrapher who has received numerous awards in calligraphy and typeface design, most recently receiving First Prize award in calligraphy at Letter Arts Review journal’s Annual Review 2006.He designed the covers of about two hundred books and magazines including RAWI’s first anthology, and provided calligraphy for National Geographic, Newsweek Magazine, Cune Press, The Guardian, University of Washington Press, and Stanford University. He writes and lectures on the history of Islamic art and Arabic calligraphy at conferences and universities and continues to exhibit his artwork in the United States and abroad.

Laila Shereen Sakr is an Egyptian-American poet, performer, rapper, activist, and multimedia artist. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, she currently works as Multimedia and Publications Editor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Laila is also senior designer for Inner File, a web and data solutions company. She co-founded the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency, a collective of artists organizing and performing politically progressive lyrical ambushes, including at Operation Ceasefire 2005 alongside Thievery Corporation and many others. She also co-founded spoken word collective Word of Mouth, a six-year open mic providing a platform for creative expression. Laila's publications include "On Becoming Arab", "Give", “Human Skin” in Mizna, Awakening, and Word of Mouth, as well as “On Becoming without Language” and “A Bunch of Feelings” in an upcoming volume edited by Nathalie Handal as well as several online publications. Her graphic design is found both on print and web pages. http://lailashereen.com

Steven Salaita currently serves as Executive Director of RAWI. He is the author of Anti-Arab Racism in the USA and of two forthcoming books, The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan and Arab American Cultures, Politics, and Literary Fictions. He is Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech.

Charles Malouf Samaha was born in 1964 and is 100% Lebanese. He studied in Florence, Italy, and graduated in 1986, with a B.A. in History from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and from the University of Miami Law School in 1989. Charles has published four books: Gadaleta’s Affair-Adalia-1859 or Correspondence regarding complaints against Her Britannic Majesty’s Vice-Consul in that port, edited by Nassif Mallouf and Charles Malouf Samaha (The Isis Press, Istanbul, 2002); A History of the Malouf People (December 2003) and an updated and expanded second edition published in December 2005; and, Brief Sketch of the Abi-George Saliba Sub-Branch of Bteghrine (July 2005). He has published numerous articles for the Paraclete, the publication for the St. Petersburg Bar Association.

Linda Dalal Sawaya is the youngest of five daughters of Lebanese immigrants. She is an artist and writer, and has recently published a new and revised edition of her popular cookbook, Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking. The book is full of recipes and generously seasoned with memoir and family stories, as well as historic photos, some dating from 1900 of her family village of Douma, Lebanon. Sawaya's earlier edition of Alice's Kitchen was excerpted in the Jan/Feb 1997 issue of Aramco World magazine, and featured on the cover with illustrations by Sawaya. Sawaya's artwork has been published on covers or in Arab American titles such as The Space Between our Footsteps, Food for Our Grandmothers, My Grandmother's Cactus, and Khalil Gibran: His Life and World. She has illustrated two children's books, and writes, teaches, cooks, and gardens in Portland, Oregon. She is currently working on writing a children's book that she plans to illustrate featuring an Arab American theme. Two of her children's book illustrations are currently on exhibition in Portland, Oregon. Her website is http://www.lindasawaya.com

Zeina Azzam Seikaly is Palestinian; her family immigrated to the United States when she was ten years old. She holds a BA in psychology and an MA in sociology and has studied languages and music. Previously an editor for academic publications, Zeina has worked as Outreach Coordinator since 1994 at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where she organizes educational programs on the Arab world and Islam for K-12 teachers in the Washington, DC, area. Her own presentations to teacher groups address Arab-American and diversity issues. She has published in Social Education, Poetry Against the War, and Mizna as well as various Middle East-related publications.

Novelist and writer Samia Serageldin was born and raised in Egypt, educated at London University, where she earned her MS in Politics, and immigrated to the United States in 1980. Her semi-autobiographical novel, The Cairo House has been translated into several European languages. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies including Dinarzad’s Children and Scheherazade’s Legacy. She is the author of essays on Arab American writing as well as on Islamic traditions, political Islam; and women in Islam, most recently published in Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop. She was the consultant editor on In the Name of Osama bin Laden. She has taught both French and Arabic, most recently at Duke University, and in addition to a regular literary review column, has freelanced for national papers. She is an active public speaker on current affairs, having formed a speakers' group after September 11, and writes a regular blog and book review on her website, www.thecairohouse.com. One of her projects in progress is an essay on Muslim women fiction writers in North America for the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures. Serageldin has two grown sons on different continents and family on a third, the perfect pretext for dividing her time between North Carolina, London, and Cairo.

Audrey Shabbas has over twenty-five years experience in teaching, curriculum development and teacher training about the Middle East and Islam. Her curriculum works include The Arab World Studies Notebook (1998), The Arabs: Activities for the Elementary and Middle School; and A Medieval Banquet in the Alhambra Palace. A long time member of The National Council for the Social Studies, she has served as a presidential appointee to its Equity and Social Justice Committee, and as Chair of the International Human Rights Education Special Interest Group. Her work has been honored by the University of Pennsylvania which presented her with their Janet Lee Stevens Award (1992) for contributions to Arab American understanding. Most recently (2002) the Middle East Studies Association's Middle East Outreach Council presented her with their Lifetime Achievement Award (the second time in their history the award has been given). She is the founder and director of the non-profit organization, AWAIR: Arab World and Islamic Resources, Berkeley, California. Beginning in 2006, her teacher workshop program will be under the sponsorship of Georgetown University's Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Relations. For more information see www.awaironline.org

Evelyn Shakir, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, is author of the book Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States (Praeger 1997) and, since the 1980s, of a number of essays on Arab American literature. In recent years, she has published primarily short fiction and personal essays; a collection of her short stories will be published next year. As a Senior Fulbright Scholar, she has taught at both the Lebanese University and Damascus University.Ahlam Shalhout transitioned her life from the world of science to the world of art when poetry began coming to her automatically in her meditative states. She was encouraged to publish her first epic Recovering Stolen Dreams from a dream. A few years later she published her second epic For The Love Of My Dreams, encouraged by similar urgings that led to her first publication. www.poetryin.com

Betty Shamieh is a Palestinian-American writer. Her play Roar had its 2004 premiere at The New Group and was the first play about Palestinian-Americans to appear off-Broadway. Roar was selected as a New York Times Critic’s Pick for four consecutive weeks. Her play The Black Eyed premiered at the Magic Theatre in May 2005. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, her life and work has been profiled in American Theatre magazine, Time Out, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times. Her website is www.bettyshamieh.com

Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian poet and writer. She grew up in the Arab world and attended college in the US, where she received an MS in journalism. She has worked as a magazine editor and book editor. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and literary journals including The Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard, DMQ Review, Drunken Boat, Flyway, The Mississippi Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Body Eclectic, The Poetry of Arab Women, and The Space Between our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East. She currently resides in Northern California with her husband and two sons.

Mahwash Shoaib is a Pakistani American poet, scholar, and translator. She works in multilingual, experimental and avant-garde forms, and translates the Urdu poetry of the Pakistani poet Kishwar Naheed into English. She is currently working on her dissertation on the transnational poetics of twentieth-century American and Asian poets Etel Adnan, Agha Shahid Ali, Theresa Cha and Kishwar Naheed. Her publications include poetry in Shattering the Stereotype (2005) and in Chain as well as academic publications in Humanities and Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature.

Michael W. Suleiman is University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Kansas State University and former Department Head (1975-1982. Among his publications are The Arab-American Experience in the United States and Canada: A Classified Annotated Bibliography (forthcoming, 2006); Arabs in America: Building a New Future (1999), editor and co-author; U.S. Policy on Palestine from Wilson to Clinton (1995), editor and co-author; Arab Americans: Continuity and Change (1989), co-editor and co-author; The Arabs in the Mind of America (1988); American Images of Middle East Peoples: Impact of the High School (1977); and Political Parties in Lebanon (1967). Suleiman serves or has served on the Editorial Boards of five journals dealing with the Middle East, namely International Journal of Middle East Studies (1982-88), Arab Studies Quarterly, Journal of Arab Affairs(1981-93), The Maghreb Review, Arab Journal of International Studies (1987-92), and Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.

Pauline Homsi Vinson is an independent scholar and translator. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Northwestern University and has taught at several universities in the United States and abroad. Most recently, she was at The American University in Sharjah. Her current research interests include Arab women writers, Arab-American literature, postcolonial/diaspora studies, Shakespeare, and English Renaissance Drama. She has published scholarly articles in academic journals as well as book reviews and translations from Arabic to English. She is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine.

Patricia Sarrafian Ward was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon and holds an MFA from University of Michigan, where she received Hopwood Awards in Novel and Short Fiction. Her writing has been published in several journals, including Ms. Magazine, The Literary Review, Epoch, and Ararat, as well as the anthologies Dinarzad’s Children and Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing. Her novel The Bullet Collection (Graywolf Press 2003) about two sisters growing up in wartime Beirut received the GLCA New Writers Award, Anahid Literary Award, and Hala Maksoud Award for Outstanding Emerging Writer. She currently lives on Sandy Hook Bay in New Jersey.

David Williams is the author of two poetry collections, Traveling Mercies and Far Sides of the Only World. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in dozens of magazines and eight anthologies, including Post-Gibran: New Arab-American Writing, A Different Path, and Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab-American Fiction. His writing is discussed at length in Memory and Cultural Politics: New Ethnic American Literatures.

Will Youmans is an activist and writer. He is a columnist with the Detroit-based Arab American News. He has written chapters for Elaine Hagopian's anthology, Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims, and CounterPunch's The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He is active in the divestment movement and is working with a group called the Divestment Support Committee. He maintains a Blog www.kabobfest.com

Alia Yunis is a journalist, fiction writer, and screenwriter whose work has appeared in publications, including the Los Angeles Times, SportsTravel, Scr(i)pt, Angeleno and Saveur. She is a 2005 PEN Emerging Voices fellow and a 2006 Hedgebrook fellow. She is completing her first novel, The Cedar House Key. Alia is the recipient of two comedy writing awards, one from Warner Bros. and the other from Women in Film.

Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis began writing poetry at the age thirteen and self-published a 50 page book of poems, Inquire Within in 1987. Zarou-Zouzounis writes poetry for all ages and is currently working with editors for her anthology of poems 1990 to present, entitled Faces and has completed an historical fiction children's book set in ancient Jericho, after the Ice Age, entitled Asham and the Smart Ox. She and a co-writer have embarked on writing a series of books of this nature. In addition, she is writing a science fiction novel and writes short stories. She has performed over 200 poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1987 with her first taking place in a book store-small press in San Francisco with Etel Adnan. She has poems published in many magazines and poetry anthologies with the most notable anthologies being, Food For Our Grandmothers, The Space Between Our Footsteps, War After War-City Lights Review #5, A Different Path-An Anthology of Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. (RAWI), and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology.

Rose Abd el Nour Zimbardo received her PhD from Yale University in 1960. Since then she has taught continuously, first for ten years at The City University of New York, and then for 28 years at Stony Brook, where she achieved the rank of Distinguished Professor. Since retirement in 1996, she has taught part-time at University of San Francisco. Her publications include three scholarly books, the most recent, At Zero Point: Discourse, Culture, and Satire in Restoration England (1998) and seven collections of critical essays, and thirty journal articles. Scholarly interests cover a wide range and include Shakespeare, Chaucer, Restoration/ 18th Century English literature, and 20th century European drama. The last chapter of At Zero Point deals with the vast difference between English travelers of the late 16th Century and English travelers of the late 17th/early 18th centuries in their perception of Middle Easterners, their lands and cultures and how we moved from heroic figures to scorned "wogs" in a mere hundred years. Her greatest work is her son, Adam Abd el Nour Zimbardo, who is a psychotherapist in San Francisco.

Josephine Zohny is a music, pop culture and critical race theory writer based in New York City. A graduate of New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized study, she received a B.A. in Music Business, Writing (Creative Non-Fiction) and Race & Ethnic Studies in 2005. Her writings on topics ranging from Michael Jackson to punk rock to the politics of hair straightening have appeared in publications like ColorLines, PopMatters, Electronic Urban Report and Z!nk. She works as an entertainment publicist to pay the bills, blogs regularly at jzohny.com, and can be reached at josiezohny(at)aol.com

Featured Writers

FICTION WRITER: Susan Muaddi Darraj
Susan Muaddi Darraj is associate professor of English at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland ...


POET: Dima Hilal
Dima Hilal is a poet and writer, born in Beirut and raised in California, where she studied at the University of California ...

Original Arab American writing:

Voices from the South
Four Lebanese Women
...

Summer Rain
Andrea Assaf
I wash my body in Beirut as missiles rain...

Salti Dispatches from Beirut
Rasha Salti reports on the situation in Lebanon for RAWI

Laila Halaby's letter to an Israeli soldier
Normally in letters I start out by wishing the person to whom I am writing good health and spirits.

Mohja Kahf's letter to a friend entitled "Israel is Godzilla"
From where I sit: Israel has been Godzilla backed by super-Godzilla...

To see Kahf's essay 'The Israelyville Horror?' please go to the homepage of www.MuslimWakeUp.com

Security Apartheid
Ginan Rauf
Amidst all the horror visiting Lebanon recently...

My Family in Lebanon
Hayan Charara -
I have stopped counting the dead. A single death is more than this world can afford...

Elmaz Abinader poems - Two for Hayan
(nothing new)
(My Father's House is a Terrorist Target) 

Word from Dahiyeh, Lebanon
by editor of ArteNews Maymanah Farhat (electronic intafada)

 Featured Artist:

war ration(allies)

al-iqaa

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