and from the inside in

Lisa Suhair Majaj is a Palestinian-American writer. Her poetry and prose address issues of war and peace, culture
and politics, homelessness and homemaking, and the multiplicities of hyphenated identities. Her books include
Geographies of Light (winner of the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize) and three co-edited collections of critical essays on
international women writers. She also writes on Arab-American literature. She has lectured and read her work widely
across the US, Europe and the Middle East, and has taught at various institutions, most recently the University of Cyprus.
She currently works on Little Plato Magazine, a children’s magazine in Arabic and English. lmajaj@cytanet.com.cy.
Marsha Mathews is an American writer and educator living in Dalton, Georgia. Her most recent book, Hallelujah
Voices, presents unique voices of a Southwest Virginia congregation as they experience unexpected, pivotal moments.
Her love poems, Sunglow & A Tuft of Nottingham Lace, won the Red Berry Editions 2011 Chapbook Award, and was
published. Her first chapbook, Northbound Single-Lane, was released in 2010 by Finishing Line Press. This book follows the
journey of a woman who finds herself suddenly single, with young children to care for. She leaves home and all she knows
to travel north through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. Marsha’s poem “Kidnapping Mary” was nominated for
a Pushcart Prize. Her story “Ride to the City” was honored the 2013 Orlando Prize (by AROHO) for Flash Fiction. Marsha
is writing a book Beauty Bound, which explores globally the human desire for beauty and the entrapment of beauty.
Sahar Mustafah is Palestinian American writer, editor, and teacher. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The
Bellevue Literary Review Story, The Grief Diaries, Great Lakes Review, Word Riot, Mizna and Chicago Literati, and others.
She was named one of “25 Writers to Watch” by Chicago’s Guild Literary Complex and was selected for Voices of Protest,
a collaboration co-sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. Her short story “Code of the West” is a 2015 American
Fiction Prize finalist. She’s co-founder and fiction editor of Bird’s Thumb. You can visit her at www.saharmustafah.com.
Rita Tapia Oregui is a professional literary translator working with Arabic, German, English and Spanish. Besides
being the founder and person in charge of all translations of the “Arabian Stories” project, she is often entrusted with
freelance literary translation assignments by individual authors, cultural institutions and embassies, and is currently
based in Hamburg, Germany.
About the “Arabian Stories” project:
“One Thousand Nights and Awakening” is a literary contest organized within the framework of Arabian Stories,
a literary project that tries to bring together the Arabic and Western worlds by both providing Arabic writers
a safe forum where they can express their ideas through literature, as well as translating said literature into
English and Spanish to make it accessible for foreigners who are interested in acquiring a better understanding
of the differences and similarities between both cultures.
STEVEN SCHREINER is the author of the collections Belly and Too Soon to Leave, and the chapbook Imposing Presence,
and co-author with Allison Cundiff of In Short, a Memory of the Other on a Good Day. His poems have appeared in
many magazines, including Poetry, Image, Colorado Review, River Styx and December, and numerous anthologies. He
is the recipient of fellowships from the VCCA, Tall Rock Retreat, and The National Writer’s Voice of the YMCA. He teaches
in the MFA Program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and is the founding editor of Natural Bridge, a journal of
contemporary literature.
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