To avoid censorship and persecution as a journalist during the regime of Saddam Hussein, when, Dunya Mikhail moved to the United States from Iraq in 1996, she identified herself as a poet on her immigration papers. She shares in her interview that poetry saved her life, as it would not have been possible otherwise to…
BIO Jeanne d’Ark Souhaid is a Lebanese poet and writer, who has worked as journalist for more than 20 years. She is the founder and president of Ibnat Alarz literary salon, the founder of the Lebanese-Arab Cultural Festival, and the chairperson of Ibnat Alarz Committee for Free Reading In Lebanon. She has received a number…
BIO Faleeha Hassan is an award-winning Iraqi poet, writer, editor and educator and a leading figure in the feminist movement in the holy city of Najaf. She is the first Iraqi woman to write poetry for the children of Iraq. Faleeha was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967. She has a master’s degree in…
BIO Hassan Al-Matrooshi is an award-winning poet, translator, and media-man from the Sultanate of Oman. He was awarded the Sultan’s Praise Medal, and honored as the Omani poet for 2016. Hasan has published four Arabic poetry collections: Lonely.. Like My Father’s Grave (2003), On The Same Mountainside (2008), I Have What To Forget (2013). and…
BIO Farouk Banjar is a Saudi poet, writer and educator. He was born in the holy city of Makka in 1949. He has a bachelor’s degree in Arabic Language literature and a master’s degree in Education Management from the University of Oklahoma in the US. In 1998 he made his debut with a collection of…
BIO Amal Awwad Radwan is a Palestinian poet, musician, writer, essayist, journalist, educator and social activist. She was born in the town of I’billin in the north of Palestine. She made her debut in 20005 with a poetry book titled An Almondy Flower Glowing. Since then she has published four poetry collections and seven…
BIO Abdulla Issa is an award-winning Palestinian poet, academic, translator, journalist, political analyst, and film producer living in Moscow. He was born in 1964 in the refugee camp of Bebela, near Damascus, Syria, where his parents had migrated, following the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Abdulla graduated from The Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature and Creative Writing. He received his PhD from…
In times like these, when the world leaders are bent on building walls between the nations and cultures, and people are more inclined to see their differences from others rather than their commonalities, there are some people who have dedicated themselves to building bridges by transcending the barriers of languages, ideologies and national identities, and…
Nizar Sartawi is a poet, translator, essayist, and columnist. He was born in Sarta, Palestine, in 1951. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Jordan, Amman, and a Master’s degree in Human Resources Development from the University of Minnesota, U.S. Sartawi is a member of the Jordanian Writers Association, General…
Being Reborn: An Immigrant’s Story ..by Yahia Lababidi It was the end of the affair. Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt I came to realize, at the age 32, that I could not live, love and create there, any longer. I required new air and it was, finally, time to dare and take a leap……
BIO Michael J. Whelan is an Irish soldier-poet & historian. He served as UN Peacekeeper in Lebanon and Kosovo in the early 1990s. 2nd in the Patrick Kavanagh and 3rd in the Jonathon Swift Creative Writing Awards and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions, Michael’s Debut collection PEACEKEEPER was published in 2016 by Doire Press. More…
BIO Deema K Shehabi is a poet, writer, and editor. The daughter of Palestinian parents, she grew up in the Arab world and moved to the United States in 1988. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies such as The Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, New Letters, Callaloo, Massachusetts Review, Perihelion, Drunken Boat,…
