Board Members

George Abraham

they/هو

Board Member

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, writer,  performance artist, and engineer who was born and raised on unceded Timucuan lands (Jacksonville, FL). Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers, and recipient of fellowships from The Arab American National Museum, The Boston Foundation, and Kundiman. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, they are currently a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate in poetry at Northwestern University.

Summer Farah

she/her

Board Member

Summer Farah is a poet and editor who currently acts as the outreach coordinator for the Radius of Arab American Writers and co-writes the newsletter Letters to Summer. In 2021, she served as the guest poetry editor for the FIYAH! Lit Palestine Solidarity Issue. Her work is published in Mizna, LitHub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Keep up with her at summerfarah.com.

feras hilal

they/them

Board Member

feras hilal is an Indigenous Palestinian writer living on Cahuilla land. some of their work has been published in the Palestinian Solidarity issue of FIYAH: a Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. they move with the Palestinian Youth Movement and the US Palestinian Community Network. they are writing themselves back home to a liberated Palestine.

Zeyn Joukhadar

He/they/هوّ

Board Member

Zeyn Joukhadar (he/they/هو) is the author of the novels The Thirty Names of Night, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award, and The Map of Salt and Stars, which won the Middle East Book Award and was a Goodreads Choice Awards and Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize finalist. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Salon, The Paris Review, [PANK], and elsewhere and has been included in anthologies such as Kink, This Arab Is Queer, Letters to a Writer of Color, and others. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Joukhadar guest edited Mizna's 2020 Queer + Trans Voices issue and mentors emerging writers of color with the Periplus Collective. You can find his work at zeynjoukhadar.com.

Jameelah Lang

she/her

Board Member

Jess Rizkallah

she/her

Board Member

Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese-American writer and illustrator. Her full-length collection THE MAGIC MY BODY BECOMES was a finalist for The Believer Poetry Award and won the 2017 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. She is a Radius of Arab American Writers board member and a 2022 Mass Cultural Council Fellow. www.jessrizkallah.com.

Glenn Shaheen

he/him

President

Glenn Shaheen is the author of two collections of poetry, Predatory and Energy Corridor (both U of Pitt Press); a chapbook of flash fiction, Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions); and a collection of flash fiction, Carnivalia (Gold Wake Press). He is the co-founder and editor of Matter: A Journal of Political Poetry and Comment, and co-founder and editor of the chapbook press Tram Editions. He lives in Houston, Texas, and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Prairie View A&M University.

Priscilla Wathington

she/her

Board Member

Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American writer and editor. Her debut poetry chapbook, PAPER AND STICK (Tram Editions / 2021), scrutinizes Israel’s militarized attempts to constrict Palestinian bodies and breath. Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, The Normal School, Mizna, Matter, and Sukoon, among others.

Past Members

Ryah Aqel