Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader
Born	1954 Masontown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Writer, poet, performer, professor
Years active	1970s–present
Known for	Co-founder of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA)
Notable work	Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon; In the Country of My Dreams...

Elmaz Abinader (born 1954 in Pennsylvania) is an American writer, poet, performer, and professor of English at Mills College. She is also a co-founder of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Of Lebanese heritage, Abinader was honored with the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2000 for her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams....

Life and career

Abinader’s family emigrated from Lebanon. She was born in Masontown, Pennsylvania, a small town known for coal mining, and raised in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, where she lived with her parents and five siblings in a household deeply influenced by Lebanese customs. They were the sole Arab family in their community. During her youth, she assisted in the family business and regularly attended Catholic services. Abinader and her siblings encountered difficulties related to their ethnic background. She completed her education at Carmichaels Area Junior/Senior High School in 1971.

She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Communication from University of Pittsburgh in 1974, where she began exploring her cultural roots and chronicling her family’s experiences during the Lebanese Civil War. Abinader earned a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1978, followed by a PhD from University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1985, with a dissertation entitled Letters from Home: Stories of Fathers and Sons.

By 1985, Abinader had taught courses in fiction, composition, poetry, film, and television writing at both Marymount Manhattan College and University of Nebraska. That same year, she was awarded the Schweitzer Humanities Fellowship at Albany State University, during which time she composed Children of the Roojme.

Her memoir Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon, published in 1991, stands as one of the earliest Arab American memoirs released through traditional publishing channels. At that point, she held the position of associate professor of English at John Jay College (City University of New York) and was preparing to join San Jose State University as an associate professor specializing in fiction and non-fiction writing.

In 1997, alongside Junot Díaz, Victor Díaz, and Diem Jones, Abinader co-established VONA/Voices—a San Francisco-based workshop dedicated to supporting writers of color. She remained actively engaged with this initiative for twenty years, leading workshops.

In 2002, Abinader was selected as one of fifteen authors invited by the U.S. State Department to contribute to a compact anthology examining aspects of American identity.

She currently serves as a creative writing instructor at Mills College.

Work

Abinader’s debut book, Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon (Norton, 1991), is a memoir that traces three generations of her Lebanese family and their struggles to establish themselves abroad. Her second work, In the Country of My Dreams...'’, is a poetry collection addressing themes of displacement; it received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Multi-cultural Poetry in 2000 as well as a Goldies Award for Literature.

She has also authored and performed multiple solo plays such as Under The Ramadan Moon, Country of Origin, 32 Mohammeds, Voices From the Siege, and The Torture Quartet. Notably, Country of Origin was presented at The Kennedy Center in 2009.

Personal life

As reported in 1991, Abinader was married to Alan Lemke.

Bibliography

Books

• This House, My Bones (Willow Books, 2014)
• In the Country of My Dreams... (Sufi Warrior Publishing, 1999)
• Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991; reissued 1997 by University of Wisconsin Press)

In anthologies

• Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry (University of Utah Press, 1988)
• Post-Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing (Kitab/Syracuse University Press, 1999)
• The New Anthology of American Poetry: Postmodernisms 1950–Present (Rutgers University Press, 2012)

Performances

• Imagining Peace, Southbank Centre, London UK, October 2010
• Country of Origin, Arabesques Festival, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, March 2009
• Lies War Discrimination, La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley CA, March 1, 2007
• Cease Fire, La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley CA, August 2006
• Poetry and Music of Arab-Americans, Amazon Lounge, Fresno CA, April 20, 2006
• Voices from the Siege, premiered 2006 at La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley
• 32 Mohammeds, Martin Segal Theater, New York NY, March 3, 2005
• The Torture Quartet, premiered 2005 at University of San Francisco
• Flower Girl, Wyoming Arts Council event at Casper College, Casper WY, October 2, 2004
• 32 Mohammeds, premiered 2004 at University of North Dakota
• Ramadan Moon, premiered 2000 at Porter Troupe Gallery, San Diego
• Country of Origin, premiered 1997 at University of California, Berkeley

Awards and residencies

• Writers in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park (2013)
• Residency Fellowship at Canserrat Artist Residency in Spain (2013)
• Teaching Fellowship with Palestine Writing Workshop (2011)
• Writer in Residence at El Gouna Writers Residency in Egypt (2010)
• Quigley Summer Fellowship; Faculty Development Grant from Mills College (2010)
• Arts Fellowship from Silicon Valley Arts Council for Fiction (2007)
• Residencies at MacDowell Colony (NH) and Villa Montalvo (CA) (2006)
• Endowed Chair at Mills College; Pushcart Prize Nomination for The Silence; Residency at Chateau La Vigny in Switzerland (2003)
• Goldies Award for Arts Recognition by San Francisco Bay Guardian (2002)
• PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Poetry (2000)
• Drammy Award for Country of Origin at IFCC (1999)
• Fulbright Senior Scholarship in Egypt (1998–1999)
• Multiple Quigley Fellowships (1994–2003) and Faculty Development Grants at Mills College (1994–2005)
• Best All Around Award at Writers' Harvest (1995)

Additional resources

• Salwa Essayah Chérif (2003). "Arab American Literature: Gendered Memory in Abinader and Abu-Jaber." MELUS, vol.28(4), pp.207–228.