Elham is an Iraqi artist currently living in Basra. She is a poet, visual artist, women’s rights activist and director of Lotus Cultural Women’s League whose mission is to empower women and provide a platform for the female voice in Iraq. Elham is a well-respected and published author of poetry. “Camp Seagulls” is her first work of auto-fiction. It is based on actual anecdotal encounters with women refugees displaced by war and violence.
Amir is an Iraqi-Canadian playwright, literary translator and an Assistant Professor of Arabic language, literature, and culture at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. His projects in Applied Theatre have been employed in workshops throughout Canada, USA, Argentina, and Iraq. He has worked with women artists, students, and refugees, utilizing Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to address human rights issues. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq, Stuck, The Mug, and The Widow. Al-Azraki is the author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq, and co-editor and co-translator of several published poems by Arab female poets.
Sharon is a Canadian writer, editor and scholar with a special interest in cultural memory, oral history migration and concepts of home. Based in Canada, her current research is focused on North African and Middle Eastern immigration to Italy.
Asmaa Samir is an Iraqi visual artist, professor and the chair of the Visual Arts Department at the University of Basra, Iraq. Her work is mostly concerned with the social and political oppression of women in Iraq.
