Nassira Belloula 

Originally from Algeria, writer and journalist Nassira Belloula has lived in Québec since 2010. In the 1980s at twenty years old she published her first collection of poetry Les Portes de Soleil. In 1993, she joined the so-called “free” press in Algeria, where she worked as a journalist for a number of daily newspapers. She has authored fifteen books focused on woman’s writing and feminism, among them: Algérie, le massacre des innocents (Éditions Fayard/France, 2000), Visa pour la haine (Alpha édition, 2007), La revanche de May (La pleine lune édition, 2010), Terre des femmes (Chihab édition 2014), Aimer Maria (Éditions Chihab, 2018), and J’ai oublié d’être Sagan (Hashtag édition, 2019). She is the recipient of numerous prizes and distinctions, among them the Kateb Yacine Interanational Prize in 2016 and the Charles Gagnon essay award in 2019.

Mohammed Gasmelbari

Born in Moscow, Russia, Mohammed Gasmelbari (better known as Modic) is a Sudanese author who grew up in Sudan and several other countries. He began writing poetry and short stories at a young age and his work has been published in several newspapers and youth cultural magazines around the world. His debut novel in Arabic titled: Haitho Takmon Al-alwan (Where the Colors Lie) was published in Cairo in 2008 and received critical acclaim from critics and readers. He graduated from the State University of New York, and he is currently working on a series of short stories and a novel.

Zeina Ismail-Allouche

Grounded in Indigenous methodologies, Zeina Ismail-Allouche is defending her oral history research-creationPhD about the life stories of individuals who experienced transracial/intercountry adoption.

A child protection expert and human rights activist, she contributed to the formulation of the International Guidelines on Children without Parental Care and founded Badael-Alternatives, an NGO advocating for the right to origins for victims of illegal adoption and those forced to separate from their biological families through placement into institutional care. Originally from Lebanon, Zeina is an interdisciplinary oral history/autoethnography storyteller concerned with the ethical representation of the historically silenced minorities. 

Emné Naserredine

Born in France in 1990, Emné Nasereddine grew up in Lebanon, where the sea was not yet a longing. Her poetry draws from her experience of immigration, borders, and grief, the life of Lebanese women, and the traditions and rites that she discovered in southern Lebanon. Her first book, La danse de figuier is published by Mémoire d’encrier.

Naya Salame

Naya Salame is a queer Lebanese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. They are based in Tiohtiá:ke as an uninvited guest and are always in the process of disidentification. Theatre and performance are central to her practice. She is interested in exploring questions of hope, recovery and transformation in a violent, patriarchal and colonial world.

Bahij Warda

When I started introducing myself as a full-time father years after Jana was born, I was copying someone else’s identification I liked on Twitter. However, upon my arrival in Canada, this description became an essential and intimate part of my self-definition, and it precedes my professional identification as a freelancer with thirteen years of experience working in press institutions in Syria and the UAE, or as a poet–officially–after my first collection Thirteen Grandchildren of a Mirror was issued in 2020. Perhaps the most accurate definition would be a person who seeks healing (الشفاء) or misery (الشقاء)–as there is only a single dot difference between them in Arabic (ف and ق).