Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader is an author and a performer. Her books include the poetry collections This House, My Bones, the Editor’s Selection for 2014 from Willow Books/Aquarius; and In the Country of My Dreams… which won the Oakland PEN, Josephine Miles Award. She also published the memoir Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon. Her plays include Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, and Country of Origin. She was awarded a Trailblazer Award by RAWI (Radius of Arab Writers International), and is a frequent contributor to Al-Jazeera English.

Abinader has been anthologized widely including in the New Anthology of American Poetry, and in The Colors of Nature. She has been a fellow at residencies in Macedonia, Brazil, Spain, and Egypt, and was a Senior Fulbright Fellow. She is one of the co-founders of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices), a writing workshop for writers-of-color. Abinader teaches at Mills College and is a fitness instructor in Oakland, California.