Don't Panic, I'm Islamic

Lynn Gaspard is the publisher of Middle-East specialist press Saqi Books. Shortlisted for the Independent Publishers Guild Young Publisher of the Year Award in 2013, Gaspard is a trustee of the Shubbak Festival and sits on the English PEN Writers in Translation Committee.

Carol Ann Duffy DBE is a Scottish poet and playwright. She was appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate in 2009 for a fixed ten-year term. Among her most notable collections of poetry are Standing Female Nude, winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time, which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture, winner of the TS Eliot Prize.

Negin Farsad is an Iranian-American comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker based in New York. She was named one of the 53 Funniest Women by the Huffington Post, one of ‘10 Feminist Comedians to Watch’ by Paper magazine, and was selected as a TED Fellow for her work in social justice comedy. She is host of the Fake the Nation podcast and has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon among others. She is director/producer of the feature films The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black (available on Netflix) and 3rd Street Blackout starring Janeane Garofalo and Ed Weeks.

Jennifer Jajeh is a Palestinian-American actress, writer and comedian whose work lies at the intersection of global politics, identity and pop culture. Her critically acclaimed one woman show I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I’m Afraid to Tell You toured for five years across the US and internationally. Directed by W. Kamau Bell, the show was dubbed ‘a fantastic and important piece of theatre’ at the Edinburgh Fringe where it received a slew of 5 star reviews. Jajeh can currently be seen on stages across Los Angeles honing her unique brand of political comedy and storytelling. She will make her television debut on the Emmy award-winning show Transparent in autumn 2017.

Sayed Kashua is the author of the novels Dancing Arabs, Let It Be Morning, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Exposure, winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, and the autobiographical collection, Native. He is a columnist for Haaretz and the creator of the popular, prize-winning sitcom Arab Labor. Kashua has received numerous awards for his journalism including the Lessing Prize for Critic (Germany) and the SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award (USA). Now living in the United States with his family, he teaches at the University of Illinois.

Arwa Mahdawi is a British-Palestinian writer based in New York. Arwa started her working life as a corporate lawyer but after getting stuck on a seventeen-year-old case about ice-cream she had a minor meltdown and switched to advertising. Having acquired a Green Card (through entirely legitimate means), Arwa promptly quit advertising for the lucrative field of freelance journalism and is now a frequent contributor to the Guardian.

Eli Valley is a writer and artist whose work has been featured in The New Republic, The Nation, The Nib, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, Gawker, Current Affairs and elsewhere. His art has been labelled ‘ferociously repugnant’ by Commentary and ‘hilarious’ by The Comics Journal. The 2011–2013 Artist in Residence at the Forward newspaper, he has given multimedia performances fusing comics with personal narrative in the United States, Europe, Africa and Israel. His first comics collection Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel was published in 2017.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called ‘An emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery’ by New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labour camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including the New York Times, Paris Review and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Aisha Mirza is a writer, artist and counsellor from East London, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She studies the impact of microaggressions on the psyche of queer black and brown people, and is interested in body hair, madness and race. Aisha’s written work has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Black Girl Dangerous, Media Diversified and openDemocracy, and she was one of the contributors to the anthology, The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, published in 2017. She has shown art in London and New York.

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize for The Blue Fox (the Nordic countries’ equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and From the Mouth of the Whale was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His latest novel Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was was awarded the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize. Also a poet, librettist and lyricist, Sjón has written nine poetry collections, four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer in the Dark. Sjón’s novels have been published in thirty-five languages.

Hassan Abdulrazzak is a British Iraqi playwright living in London. His previous plays include Baghdad Wedding, The Prophet and Love, Bombs and Apples. His new play And Here I Am will be part of the Shubbak Festival 2017 and will then tour the UK. His essays, short stories, translations and poems have appeared in the Guardian, Edinburgh Review, Banipal and Snakeskin. He is the recipient of George Devine, Meyer-Whitworth and Pearson theatre awards as well as the Arab British Centre Award for Culture.

Leila Aboulela was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She is the author of four novels, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her collection of short stories Coloured Lights was shortlisted for the MacMillan Silver PEN Award. Leila’s work has been translated into 14 languages, broadcast on BBC Radio and appeared in publications such as Granta, Freeman’s and the Guardian. Leila grew up in Sudan and moved to Scotland in her mid-twenties.

Shadi Alzaqzouq is an award-winning Palestinian artist whose works have been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. In his series Muslim Punk, Al-Zaqzouq combines universally-recognised though traditionally contrary punk and Muslim characteristics to create one being. In this way, the being disturbs the establishment while also highlighting the freedom of each individual and their religion. Currently residing in Paris where he graduated in Fine Art from Paris 8 University, Al-Zaqzouq was invited by the renowned street-artist Banksy to participate in his show Dismaland in 2015. He won the Qattan Foundation Young Palestinian Artist Award in 2007.

Chant Avedissian was born in Cairo. He studied fine arts in Montreal (1970–73) and print-making at the Ecole National Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (1974–76). He returned to Cairo in 1980 and worked with Hassan Fathy from 1981–89. His work is part of the public collection at the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), the National Museum of Scotland and the National Gallery of Jordan. He lives in Cairo.

Born in Damascus, Tammam Azzam currently lives in Germany. Originally trained in Fine Art, Azzam turned to digital media and graphic art following the outbreak of violence in Syria to create visual composites of the conflict that would resonate with an international audience. In 2013, Azzam made headlines worldwide when his Freedom Graffiti print went viral. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and institutions worldwide including City Museum of Odenburg in Germany, For-Site Foundation in San Francisco, Banksy’s Dismaland in Weston-super-Mare, Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, De Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam, Rush Arts in New York, Abu Dhabi Festival and Ayyam Gallery in London and Dubai.

Bidisha is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in social justice, international affairs, gender and the arts. In 2013 she was an International Reporting Project Fellow, raising awareness of global health and development issues. She also does outreach work in UK prisons, detention centres and refugees’ resource centres. This inspired her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015). Bidisha was the regular presenter of BBC Radio 3’s flagship arts programme Night Waves and the World Service arts show The Strand, as well as guest presenting Radio 4’s Saturday Review and Woman’s Hour, for which she is also a regular contributor. She is a Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation and is also a published poet.

Chaza Charafeddine is a Lebanese artist, photographer and writer. Her ‘Divine Comedy’ series mixes her photographic portraits of men with 1940s Iranian, Indian, Afghani and Egyptian popular portrayals of mythological beings or with Mughal Islamic art from Persian and Turkish miniatures of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Charafeddine’s work has been exhibited worldwide including at the Institut du Monde Arabe in France, Högkvarteret Gallery in Stockholm and Green Art Gallery in Dubai; and her performances have been shown in contemporary art venues in Lebanon and Europe. Chaza Charafeddine is represented by Agial Art Gallery / Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut.

Moris Farhi MBE is an Anglo-Turkish author. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Vice-President of International Pen. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and after a brief acting career turned to writing. His award-wining works include the novels Journey through the Wilderness, Children of the Rainbow, Young Turk and A Designated Man, and a collection of poems, Songs from Two Continents.

Joumana Haddad is an award-winning writer, journalist and women’s rights activist. She was selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women for four years in a row by Arabian Business magazine for her cultural and social activism. She is the founder of Jasad, a quarterly Arabic-language erotic cultural magazine, which made headlines around the world at its launch in 2009. Her many publications include I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman, which was translated into thirteen languages, Superman is an Arab: On God, Marriage, Macho Men and Other Disastrous Inventions, and The Third Sex. She lives in Beirut with her two sons.

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father. He has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and other international organisations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt. His debut novel Guapa was published in 2016, receiving critical acclaim from the New Yorker, Guardian and others, and was awarded a Stonewall Honour in 2017. Haddad was selected as one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2016 by Foreign Policy magazine. His writing has appeared in Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Daily Beast, among others. He currently divides his time between London and the Middle East.

British Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj has established an international following for his photography. His work features in several collections worldwide, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; and Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris. Hajjaj’s most recent solo shows include ‘My Rock Stars’ at the Newark Museum, USA (2015) and ‘Kesh Angels’, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York (2014). Hajjaj won the Sovereign Art Foundation Middle East and African Art Prize 2011 and was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize 2009 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. His work has featured in numerous publications, including Hassan Hajjaj: Photography, Fashion, Film, Design.

Omar Hamdi is a Welsh-Egyptian TV presenter, comedian and writer. He grew up in Cardiff before moving to London to perform stand-up full-time. He has completed a national UK theatre tour, as well as performing at various festivals and clubs around the world. His work and TV programmes have been well-received and won a BAFTA among other awards. He has been recommended by the National Union of Journalists as ‘a talented comic commentator on topical events’, and by the Telegraph for his ‘shrewd insights into multiculturalism’. His writing has been published in the Independent, International Business Times and New Internationalist.

Amrou Al-Kadhi is a British-Iraqi writer, performer, filmmaker and drag queen. Whilst studying at Cambridge he set up musical comedy drag troupe Denim, which has since performed to diverse audiences around the UK, including at Edinburgh Festival 2017 and with Florence and the Machine at Glastonbury. Amrou wrote and starred in the short film Nightstand, which was executively produced by Stephen Fry and distributed to seventy-two cinemas nationwide. He is currently co-writing a comedy TV series entitled Nefertiti that he will also star in and which is in development with Big Talk Productions and Channel 4. He is also working on the feature film Abigail and Gabriel with Sarah Brocklehurst Productions and BBC Films.

Mazen Kerbaj is a Lebanese graphic novelist, visual artist and musician. The author of over fifteen books, his work has been published in a number of international anthologies, newspapers and magazines and translated into more than ten languages. His art has exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs worldwide. Kerbaj is considered to be one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. He is co-founder of Irtijal, an annual improvisation music festival, and of Al Maslakh, the first experimental music label in the region. A trumpet player, Kerbaj has played in solo and group performances around the world since 2000.

Sabrina Mahfouz is a British Egyptian playwright, poet and screenwriter. She was awarded the Fringe First Award for her play Chef, and her play Clean transferred to New York in 2014. Her poetry has been performed and produced for TV, radio and film, including in the recent Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse on BBC2. Mahfouz is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, has an essay in the award-winning The Good Immigrant, and has published eight plays with Bloomsbury Methuen. How You Might Know Me is her debut collection of poetry with Out-Spoken Press.

Alberto Manguel is internationally acclaimed as an anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist and editor, and is the author of several award-winning books including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading and The Library at Night, and the novels News from a Foreign Country Came and All Men Are Liars. He was born in Buenos Aires and became a Canadian citizen in 1982. Manguel was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and is currently the director of the National Library of Argentina.

Esther Manito is a British Lebanese comedian. Listed as ‘One to watch’ in 2016 by Funny Women, the UK’s Leading Female Comedy Community, she was also a semi-finalist in the Leicester Square Comedian of the Year competition in the same year. Esther has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Extra as part of the new comedy awards and will be performing her first show at the Edinburgh festival in August 2017.

James Nunn is an artist, book designer and illustrator whose recent work includes The Corbyn Colouring Book, Colouring the Tour de France, and At Night: A Guide for the Wakeful. He was born in Bradford during the three-day week and has never looked forward. Amidst the regular power cuts of the 1970s he learnt to draw entirely in the dark. He drew the panda on the bestselling guide to punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. He lives and works in Bath.

Chris Riddell is a British author, illustrator and renowned political cartoonist whose work appears in The Observer, Literary Review and New Statesman. He is the creator of an extraordinary range of books which have won many illustration awards, including the UNESCO Prize, the Greenaway Medal and the Hay Festival Medal for Illustration. Riddell also achieved global success through his New York Times bestselling collaboration on The Edge Chronicles with Paul Stewart and through his illustrated works with other high-profile figures including Neil Gaiman. He was appointed UK Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2015–17. He lives and works in Brighton.

Hazem Saghieh is a Lebanese writer and journalist. He is the editor of the daily Afkar (Ideas) page for al-Hayat newspaper and the political weekly supplement Tayyarat (Currents). Saghieh has published numerous books in Arabic, including works on Umm Kulthum, Arabism and the cultures of Khomeinism. He lives in Beirut.

Rana Salam has been running her Beirut-based design studio for over a decade. She specialises in brand creation, art direction and consultancy, and event curation, and has produced distinctive designs for clients as diverse as Harvey Nichols, Villa Moda, Liberty of London, Boutique 1, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Paul Smith. A graduate of Central St Martins and the Royal College of Art, Rana is amongst the most celebrated of designers and is known for her understanding and use of Middle Eastern popular art and culture. Her work has been widely published in magazines including Elle Deco, Wallpaper, Creative Review, Design Week, Aishti, Bespoke, Canvas and Brownbook.

Karl Sharro is an architect, satirist and commentator on the Middle East. He blogs at Karl reMarks and has written for a number of international publications including The Atlantic and Los Angeles Review of Books. He wrote and presented a short video, ‘Simple one-sentence explanation for what caused ISIS’, for Channel 4 in 2015. Taking part in several BBC broadcasts, Sharro’s idea for a ‘1000 Mile-City’ along the East Mediterranean coast was broadcast on the BBC’s This Week’s World. His publications include Style: In Defence of Islamic Architecture and co-author of Manifesto: Towards a New Humanism in Architecture.

Laila Shawa is a Palestinian artist living in London. Her work has been exhibited and is held in public and private collections worldwide, including the national galleries of Jordan and Malaysia, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the British Museum in London and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington DC. Her most recent works Trapped and The Other Side of Paradise were exhibited at the October Gallery in London in 2012.

Bahia Shehab is an award-winning artist, art historian and scholar of Arabic script based in Cairo. Her street art has been on display in museums, galleries and streets around the world, and was featured in the 2015 documentary Nefertiti’s Daughters. She is the recipient of many awards and international recognitions, including the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture (2017), Prince Claus Fund Award (2016), TED Senior fellowship (2016) and BBC 100 Women list (2014). Shehab is associate professor of design and founder of the graphic design program at the American University in Cairo. Her publications include A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Alif.

Born to Jamaican parents living in Brixton, Alex Wheatle MBE spent most of his childhood in a Surrey children’s home. In 1977 he returned to Brixton and founded the Crucial Rocker sound system, performing his own lyrics under the name of Yardman Irie. He spent a short stint in prison following the 1981 Brixton uprising. After his release he became known as the Brixtonbard, and his first novel Brixton Rock was published to critical acclaim in 1999. Alex is now working on the next title in his Crongton series. He teaches in various places and holds workshops in prisons. In 2008 Alex was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to literature.