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Author: Empower a Refugee

PATRICIA MARTIN HOLT was named a Georgia Author of the Year and awarded an Independent Publishers Association Bronze Medal for her first book, Committee of One, an account of refugees in Jordan and an inspiring woman among them. Passionate in her support of refugees, Holt was later drawn to the community of Clarkston, Georgia, a hub of refugee resettlement near her home. In Creating Hope, hear the voices of refugee women in Clarkston and learn about Denise Smith, a woman whose faith compels her to help these women gain vital income and self-esteem by sewing and selling one-of-a-kind handbags.

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Linda Sartor has been a peace/justice activist and an educator and has been arrested a number of times protesting atrocities committed by the US “in her name with her tax money” such as the development and testing of nuclear weapons, and the use of drones for military purposes.  After she saw how the US responded to 9/11, educating and protesting weren’t enough any more, and her tormented heart led her to travel to the war-torn places described in this book.  During her more regular life, Linda lives in an intentional community, teaches research courses in a master’s in leadership program, guides vision quest wilderness trips with a non-profit organization, and is the volunteer coordinator for the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County.

Author: English from the Roots I, English from the Roots II.

Joegil K. Lundquist served for many years as a second grade teacher in Seattle's Bush School. She noticed that her students were having a difficult time decoding large words. In the second half of the year she began teaching Greek and Latin root words--not the entire laguages. Her students kept boxes with one note card for each root word that they collected. Lundquist found that disruptive students changed their behavior when they grasped the logic behind the derivation of English words. All students became more confident and their ability showed marked improvement.

Ultimately, Joegil retired from teaching to create her books English from the Roots Up, Volumes I and II. She publishes under the imprint Literacy Unlimited and is based in the Seattle area.

Author: Angel's Glance, Dreaming in the Maze of Love-Grief-Madness, The 13th Boy, Twisted Hipster, Best Revenge. Work-in-progress: My Muslim Best Friend

A graduate of Horace Mann HS, Sarah Lawrence College, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts (MFA), Steve has written feature pieces for The New York Times, Village Voice, New Republic, New York Newsday and many others. He has also written screenplay adaptations of his plays Blue Kiss and Sizzle Sizzle, and of his memoir The 13th Boy. He has written the screenplays The Falling Man, Sympathy for the Devil (with David Hunt), and The American Wife and The Big Dog Rules (both with Ralph Pezzullo). He’s currently based in Santa Monica.

Author: Kivu, A Year at the Edge of the Jungle, The Girl Ran Away, Africa Africa!

Fred Hunter served as The Christian Science Monitor's Africa correspondent and as a USIS foreign service officer in Belgium and the Congo.

A playwright/screenwriter, Hunter's The Hemingway Play was given a staged reading at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, presented at Harvard University's Loeb Drama Center and produced by PBS's Hollywood Television Theater series.  Other plays have been performed at the Dallas Theatre Center,ACT in San Francisco and the Ensemble Theater in Santa Barbara.
Movies Hunter has written have been produced by PBS, ABC and CBS.  Research for his PBS drama Lincoln and the War Within led him to write the historical novel Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship.  He's taught Screenwriting at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, at UCSB and at Principia College where he also taught Modern African Literature.  The Girl Ran Away is his third  novel.  A collection of short stories Africa, Africa! drew on his experiences in Belgium and the Congo and as a working journalist, based in Nairobi.

Fred Hunter blogs at www.TravelsinAfrica.com. 

Author: Gulen's Dialogue on Education, Biblical Time Out of Mind, The Ottoman Mosaic (essay on education).

Professor Tom Gage has enjoyed a successful half-century career in education and taught graduate courses for over three decades at Humboldt State University. His interests range from John Steinbeck to Captain Bill Jones, a colorful figure from the life of Andrew Carnegie. Dr. Gage’s book Gülen’s Dialogue on Education: A Caravanserai of Ideas is a freewheeling exploration that connects the educational innovator James Moffett to the Turkish educator and inspirational figure Fethullah Gülen to John Dewey to Montessori and more. Gage has been involved with the Middle East since the 1950s. Following a year of hitchhiking that landed him in Damascus in 1959, he returned to the University of California at Berkeley where earned BA, MA, and PhD degrees. He is a Fulbright scholar who taught in Aleppo, Syria for an academic year in 1983 and has also taught in China, Turkey, and Greece. In the 1970s, Gage served as dean of three summer programs held in eight European nations. He has authored, co-authored, and edited / consulted on twenty books. In 2013, his e-book American Prometheus was recognized with two Silver awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association, one in history for “eLit Illuminating Digital Publishing Excellence” and the other for the “Best Regional E-Book” for the eastern region of the US. For more: www.gagepage.org

Author: Lost Arrow, The World of Patience Gromes, The Road from Damascus, An Ear to the Ground (ed), An Intimate Dinner Party (ed), Tips for Writers, Light in the Palace.

Scott C. Davis is a writer, photographer, and businessman based in Seattle, Washington. His book, Lost Arrow and Other True Stories, won the KC Arts Award. His book, The World of Patience Gromes, won the Governor's Writers Award. He is founded Cune Press along with the graphic designer and Aleppo native Mamoun Sakkal in 1994.

Author: Stage Warriors.

Sarah Imes Borden received her MFA in acting from the California State University, Fullerton and works as an actress, activist, and lecturer. She currently teaches about theatrical practices around the world for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. When she’s not teaching or in the theatre Sarah enjoys British television, murder mysteries and traveling with her husband Ian.

Author: The Curse of the Achille Lauro

Reem al-Nimer is a Palestinian activist and the widow of Abu al-Abbas, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) who was associated with the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985.

Hailing from landed Palestinian notability, Reem al-Nimer grew up in Beirut from ten years of age. Here she joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Movement. Her marriage to Abu al-Abbas took her to Tunis, Damascus, Libya, and Baghdad during an era of conflict, suffering—and surprising hope. In 2003, Ms al-Nimer left her husband in Baghdad for the safety of Beirut as the clouds of war gathered. Abu al-Abbas died in US custody in Baghdad in March, 2004.

Author: The Plain of Dead Cities

Bruce McLaren is an Australian from rural New South Wales, who left home and just kept on going. He has an academic background in the archaeology and ancient history of the Middle East and Central Asia, regions in which he has both traveled and worked extensively. He received his doctorate in Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney and published the first examination of the military architecture of Bronze Age Jordan in 2003. He has excavated at numerous sites across the Middle East, dating from the Neolithic to the Islamic Periods, and is intimately acquainted with the ancient and modern history of Syria. McLaren has always considered Syria to be the most mysterious and wondrous of lands and used to entertain serious thoughts of living out his days in Damascus. Instead, he now resides in the United States, where he sadly views events in the Syrian land that he loves from afar.

Illustrator: A Pen of Damascus Steel

Ali Ferzat (also “Farzat” and “Firzat”) is the dean of Syrian political cartoonists. His work has appeard for forty-eight years in major Arab daily newspapers as well as in Le Monde and other international publications. Farzat has served as head of the Society of Arab Cartoonists since 1980 and has won many awards. In October 2011, he and other Arab Spring activists received the Sakharov Rights Prize from the European Parliament. Time magazine nominated him as one of the “100 most influential people in the world.”

Author: Kisses from a Distance, Dam Foolishness

Raff Ellis is a former computer industry executive, whose writing credits include many short stories, magazine articles, columns, essays and three books.

Ellis' first full length book, "Kisses from a Distance," published in 2007 by Cune Press, was nominated for a National Book Award and won the prize for adult non-fiction given by the Arab American National Museum of Dearborn, MI.

Author: Kisses from a Distance, Dam Foolishness

Raff Ellis is a former computer industry executive, whose writing credits include many short stories, magazine articles, columns, essays and three books.

Ellis' first full length book, "Kisses from a Distance," published in 2007 by Cune Press, was nominated for a National Book Award and won the prize for adult non-fiction given by the Arab American National Museum of Dearborn, MI.

Author: The Soldier, the Builder & the Diplomat. Coming Soon: Triple Wide. Work-in-progress: When Robert Kennedy Lost an Election

Steven Schlesser is a freelance writer and independent historian based in Portland, Oregon. A graduate of Claremont McKenna College and Vermont Law School, Schlesser writes a monthly newsletter called The Schlesser Review and is a contributing editor to the magazine Brainstorm NW. 

Steve worked for many years in the wood products industry and this is the setting for his forthcoming memoir with the working title: "Triple Wide: From Silver Spoon to Trailer Trash Or How Dad and I Made Millions in Manufactured Housing." 

Author: Apartheid Is a Crime

Mats Svensson is a Swedish author, photographer, diplomat, and teacher, who has a master’s degree in Social Sciences and has been a development worker since 1974. Between 1974 and 1988 he worked for several NGOs and international consultancies, and since 1988 for the Swedish Government. He has worked for longer periods in Congo–Brazzaville, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the occupied Palestinian territory, and Zambia, as well as shorter periods in Malawi, South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana.

Mats Svensson’s book, Crimes, Victims and Witnesses—Apartheid in Palestine, was published in South Africa in 2012.

Mats Svensson has held eight solo photo exhibitions of his photos in Israel, Palestine, Sweden, and Zambia.

 

Author / Illustrator: Learning First in Black & White, Tossing Around Ideas, Putting It All Together - Exercises, Creative Paths, Doodles & Sketchbook. 

Diane Solvang-Angell is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Seattle. She has worked for many years as a freelance designer and illustrator, as an instruction of graphic design, and as a marketing communications manager with a Fortune 500 company.

Solvang-Angell was an art student in Seattle when she first encountered Fed Griffin, an artist, art teacher, and a practical philosopher who was conducting experiments into the application of logic to graphic design, with particular reference to the need of commercial designers to turn out projects on demand . . . whether or not their muse happened to be active that day.  

Author: Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances

Carsten Wieland is academician, a political consultant, and journalist who has served in Germany's Foreign Ministry. He has lived and worked in Syria, participated in the Geneva peace talks, speaks fluent Arabic, and is an expert on modern Syria and the causes of the Syrian Civil War.

Author: Child Labor - Legalize? Or Outlaw?

Thinh Nguyen was born and grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam and is passionate about human rights. She graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, where she studied international law. Her interest in human rights was sparked by a university course on the topic. That spark eventually became a flame, prompting her to reject a career in diplomacy in pursuit of her passion for ensuring the basic rights of others.

“Living my whole life in a developing country, I have seen with my own eyes how poverty affects the human rights of people around me. Poor people in my community lack food, so they do not lead a normal, healthy life. They lack resources, and so cannot access better education or a reasonable standard of health care. Their situation gave me the passion and motivation to found and develop Better Life Vietnam (BLV).”

Author: Stories My Father Told Me

Elia Zughaib grew up in Syria and Lebanon before coming to America to study at Syracuse University.
He received his PHD in Political Science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
He joined the United States Foreign Service and served in Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, and France until his
retirement.

He and his wife, Georgia, live in Virginia.

Author: Steel & Silk, East of the Grand Umayyad

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian historian and founding chairman of The Damascus History Foundation, which aims at preserving the late Ottoman, colonial, and early independence documents of the Syrian capital, threatened by age, neglect, and the present war in Syria. In 2012-2013, he served as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. His research focuses on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is also a research fellow at St. Andrews University in Scotland and a co-founder of its Syrian Studies Center. He is an expert on pre-Baath Syria. 

Moubayed has written several books, including Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship (University Press of America, 2000), Steel & Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 (Cune Press, 2005), and Syria and the USA: From Wilson to Eisenhower (IB Tauris, 2012). His 2015 book, "Under the Black Flag: At the frontier of the new jihad" (IB Tauris) has been translated into six languages. 

Author: A Pen of Damascus Steel

Ali Ferzat (also "Farzat" or "Firzat") is the most prominent Arab political cartoonist. He was awarded the prestigious Sakharov Rights Prize along with four other Arab Spring activists by the European Parliament in October, 2011. Farzat he has been breaking "the rules" in the current Syrian turmoil by depicting the president in his drawings. A recent drawing of Bashar Asad hitching a ride out of town from Muamar Gadhaffi apparently provoked an attack in August, 2011 by masked men carrying guns who threatened even harsher treatment if Farzat continued to criticize the regime. 

Author: The Soldier, the Builder & the Diplomat. Coming Soon: Triple Wide. Work-in-progress: When Robert Kennedy Lost an Election

Steven Schlesser is a freelance writer and independent historian based in Portland, Oregon. A graduate of Claremont McKenna College and Vermont Law School, Schlesser writes a monthly newsletter called The Schlesser Review and is a contributing editor to the magazine Brainstorm NW. 

Steve worked for many years in the wood products industry and this is the setting for his forthcoming memoir with the working title: "Triple Wide: From Silver Spoon to Trailer Trash Or How Dad and I Made Millions in Manufactured Housing." (255)

Author: The Dusk Visitor & Other Stories from Syria

Musa Al-Halool, who earned his PhD in Comparative Literature from the Pennsylvania State University in 1995, is a Syrian academic, short story writer, and literary translator with over 30 books to his name. He is currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Taif University, Saudi Arabia.

Most recently, he translated "White Carnations: 101 Tales from War-torn Syria" by Musa Rahum Abbas and authored "The Dusk Visitor & Other Stories from Syria: A Writer from Raqqa Responds to the Strife in Syria."

Author: White Carnations

Musa Rahum Abbas is a Syria poet, fiction writer, observer, and academic who has lived for many years in Saudi Arabia. He is the author of "al-Afilun" (poetry), "Bilan" (fiction), and "Buruq ala Thuqub Sawda" (short stories).

Author: Stage Warriors

Sarah Imes Borden received her MFA in acting from the California State University, Fullerton and works as an actress, activist, and lecturer. She currently teaches about theatrical practices around the world for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. When she’s not teaching or in the theatre Sarah enjoys British television, murder mysteries and traveling with her husband Ian.

Author: Syria - A Decade of Lost Chances

Carsten Wieland is academician, a political consultant, and journalist who has served in Germany's Foreign Ministry. He has lived and worked in Syria, participated in the Geneva peace talks, speaks fluent Arabic, and is an expert on modern Syria and the causes of the Syrian Civil War.

Author: The Plain of Dead Cities

Bruce McLaren is an Australian from rural New South Wales, who left home and just kept on going. He has an academic background in the archaeology and ancient history of the Middle East and Central Asia, regions in which he has both travelled and worked extensively. He received his doctorate in Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney and published the first examination of the military architecture of Bronze Age Jordan in 2003. He has excavated at numerous sites across the Middle East, dating from the Neolithic to the Islamic Periods, and is intimately acquainted with the ancient and modern history of Syria. McLaren has always considered Syria to be the most mysterious and wondrous of lands and used to entertain serious thoughts of living out his days in Damascus. Instead, he now resides in the United States, where he sadly views events in the Syrian land that he loves from afar.

Author: Glow in the Dark

Lisa Teasley is a graduate of UCLA and a native of Los Angeles, where she currently lives. Her critically acclaimed debut, GLOW IN THE DARK, is winner of the 2002 Gold Pen Award for Best Short Story Collection and the 2002 Pacificus Literary Foundation Best Short Story Writer award for fiction. She has also won the May Merrill Miller Award, the National Society of Arts & Letters Short Story Award, Los Angeles, and the Amaranth Review.

Her second novel HEAT SIGNATURE, praised by publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, was released August 2006. 

Follow Lisa on Twitter. @sattvicsweet

Author: Nietzsche Awakens! and Blood & Desire

Farid Younes, Architect and Thinker, earned his Diplome d’étude Superieur (DES) in Architecture at INBA (Institut National des Beaux-Arts)in Lebanon in 1987. He later studied Environmental Design (Aménagement) at the University of Montreal in Canada where he earned a PhD in 1997. 

He served as the Chair of the Architecture Department at Notre Dame University, Lebanon, from 1999 to 2005 and since then has served as an Associate Professor. 

Farid has published articles on: Paradigmatic Change during History (epistemological, teleological, ontological, and methodological dimensions); Schools of Thought in Art and Architecture; Sacred Art and Architecture (Maronite and Islam); Sociology  in Architecture; Nietzsche and the nietzscheanism.

Author: Cradle of Intrigue

Drew H. Kinney, a young scholar from Upstate, New York, is broadly interested in Middle East politics. As a doctoral candidate in political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, his dissertation, Politicians at Arms, explores the nexus between political violence and military coups d’état. Drew investigates civilian statesmen’s strategic use of the military to seize power in postwar Syria. 

The research uses British Foreign Office (FO) documents, Arabic language memoirs, and French and Arabic newspapers to argue politicians formed alliances with like-minded officers when high polarization raised the stakes of political defeat while limited opportunities for electoral competition blocked peaceful challenges to incumbent power. Drew researched and taught political science in Amman, Jordan, and conducted archival work at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. He got his start as a scholar of the region by researching and studying Arabic intensively in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine.

Khaldoun Fansa is a consulting architect, who managed restoration projects in the Old City of Aleppo. He was one of the founders of “the Old City of Aleppo Rehabilitation Project” and was selected by GTZ to establish and manage the “Residents Lending Fund" between 1993 and 2001.

Fansa was a contributor to the German exhibitions “Damascus – Aleppo: 5000 Years of Civic Development” in 2000, and “Saladin and The Crusaders” in 2006. Mr Fansa presented and published several papers related to the Old City of Aleppo and worked as a consultant to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture as a manager of the Preservation Work in the Citadel of Aleppo and the Citadel of Masyaf, between 2000 and 2008.

Khaldoun Fansa was a founding member of “Aleppo Citadel Friend Society” in 2006.

Author: Art in Exile

Natasha Hamarneh Hall is originally from Jordan and has lived and worked on education and protection issues in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt.  She was living in Damascus just prior to the revolution.  For the past 5 years she has traveled around the world to interview refugees from over 15 countries.   She trains NGOs, INGOs, and government officials about the conflicts in Syria and Iraq and particularly brings attention to the situation in Yarmouk Camp and for Palestinians from Syria in general.    In Jordan, she initiated a project called Photos to Develop where she taught children (especially girls) leading semi-nomadic lives in the Badia how to use cameras and used their pictures to raise awareness about issues they face in their communities.  In 2014, Natasha founded Art in Exile, which promotes artists, filmmakers, actors, and musicians and raises awareness on crises in the Middle East through artistic expression.  She remains an advocate for civilians in conflict.

Natasha Hamarneh Hall is the program manager of Center for Civilians in Conflict for the Middle East & North Africa.

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