Elmaz Abinader
Alum 2024
Elmaz is an author and a performer. Her most recent poetry collection, This House, My Bones, was The Editor’s Selection for 2014 from Willow Books/Aquarius. Her books include a memoir: Children of the Roojme, A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, a book of poetry, In the Country of My Dreams… which won the Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Award. Recently she was awarded a Trailblazer Award by RAWI (Radius of Arab Writers International). Her plays include Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, and Country of Origin. She has been a frequent contributor to Al-Jazeera English. Elmaz has been anthologized widely including in the New Anthology of American Poetry, and in The Colors of Nature. Her writing can be found in many literary magazines including Terrain, Michigan Quarterly Review, Taos Journal Of Poetry, StoneCoast, and Of Humans & Nature, among others. She is completing her novel Almost a Life, a volume of poetry called Life Cycles of the Lost and a teaching book on radicalizing writing workshops in the community. Elmaz is one of the co-founders of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA/Voices) a writing workshop for writers-of-color. She teaches at Mills College, is a fitness instructor at http://www.
Elmaz was part of Mesa’s 2024 Voices for Palestine invitational residency.