Seeking uncanny, fun, experimental, creepy, sarcastic, playful, vulgar, inventive, sexual, weird, sweet, and evocative works, editors Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch set out to collect Arab and Arabophone queer writing. The result is an anthology brimming with gems by emerging and established writers and an homage to the lineages and complexities of queer Arab life. Multi-genre, multi-generational, and global, El Ghourabaa is an enigma, a delight, and a contribution to an ongoing conversation and creative outpouring.
Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, a sci-fi novel published in 2022 with Common Notions Press.
George Abraham (they/he/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. He is also the author of the chapbooks al youm (The Atlas Review, 2017), and the specimen’s apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from The Arab American National Museum, The Boston Foundation, the National Performance Network, and the Map Fund, and more. Their writing has appeared in The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, The Paris Review, Mizna, and many other journals and anthologies.
Bazeed is a multi–award winning Egyptian immigrant, poet, playwright, performance artist, actor, editor, translator, curator, massage therapist, and cook, living in Brooklyn. An alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and pantry lists, their work across genres has been published by Poetry; Palette; Driftwood Press; Mizna; The Margins; and The Evergreen Review, among others. Their first play, peace camp org, an autobiographical queer anti-Zionist musical(ish) comedy about summer camp, is published by Oberon Books, and won the Dramatists Guild’s Lanford Wilson Award for creative promise. Other works in prose and plays has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Sundance Institute, Arab American National Museum, AAWW, the Center for Fiction, Cafe Royal, Lambda Literary, Queer Art Mentorship, and Trans Lab, among others.
