Tues
day\, April 22 | 6-7:30 p.m.
Northern Lights Branch
| 4093 Cleveland Ave.
6 p.m. \;|&nbs
p\;Poetry Readings
6:45 p.m.| \;Panel Discussion
7:15 p.m. \;| Audience Q&\;A
In cele bration of Arab American Heritage Month\, local Arab American poets and wr iters Ruth Awad\, Sara Abou Rashed\, and Mandy Shunnarah will read from re cent works and discuss their craft.
\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S
Ruth Awad is a Leba nese-American disabled poet\, a 2021 NEA Poetry fellow\, and the author of Outside the Joy (Third Man Books\, 2024) and Set to Music a Wildfire \;(Southern Indiana Review Press\, 2017)\, winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poet ry. Alongside Rachel Mennies\, she is the co-editor of The Familiar Wi ld: On Dogs and Poetry (Sundress Publications\, 2020). She is also th e recipient of a 2020 and 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awa rd. Her work is widely anthologized\, most recently appearing in You A re Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limó\;n\, an d can be found in The Atlantic\, AGNI\, Poetry\, Poem-a-Day\, The Beli ever\, The New Republic\, Pleiades\, Waxwing\, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale\, and she l ives and writes in Columbus\, Ohio.
\nOriginally from Palestine\, bu t born and raised in Syria\, Sara Ab ou Rashed moved with her family to Columbus\, Ohio in 2013. Since then \, she has keynoted at numerous conferences such as the National Conventio n of Teachers of English\, the United States of Women\, and Senator Sherro d Brown&rsquo\;s Women&rsquo\;s Leadership Summit. Sara's works appear in over 20 publications\, including Poetry Magazine\, Poetry Wales\, The Kenyon Review\, The LA Review and a language arts curriculum by McGra w-Hill. At sixteen\, Sara delivered a TEDxTalk and was nominated for a Pus hcart Prize. In 2019\, she wrote and starred in her debut one-woman show t itled \;A Map of Myself\, in which she traced her family&rsquo\;s disp lacement journey and interrogated identity\, belonging\, immigration\, and finding home. Sara holds a BA in International Studies and Creative Writi ng from Denison University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Z ell Writers&rsquo\; Program at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She l ives in Columbus and is at work on her first collection of poetry.
\nMandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born\, Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer who now call s Columbus\, Ohio\, home. Their essays\, poetry\, and short stories have b een published in The New York Times\, Electric Literature\, The Rumpus \, and others. \;Their first book\, Midwest Shreds: Skating T hrough America&rsquo\;s Heartland\, was published in July 2024 by Bel t Publishing. Their second book\, a poetry collection titled We Had Ma nsions\, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2025. \;
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