The chosen writers from the 2019 and 2020 Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press (HBKU Press) & Art Omi Writer’s Residency, Lilas Taha and Layanne Malluhi, will participate in the fall session of the annual Art Omi: Writers residency programme in Ghent, New York beginning on October 1.
Their participation is the culmination of a partnership established in 2019 between HBKU Press and Art Omi to include a writer from an Arab country in the Art Omi: Writers residency cohort. While the pandemic prevented the chosen writers from participating in the previous years’ editions of the residency due to restrictions on travel, both Taha and Malluhi will join as HBKU Press’ sponsored residents this fall.
“HBKU Press initiated this collaboration with the aim of providing Arab writers with a much-need avenue to develop their skills in a dedicated environment while taking advantage of the guidance and support of professionals in the industry,” explained Bachar Chebaro, executive director of HBKU Press.
DW Gibson, director, Art Omi: Writers, said: “With the Covid pandemic presenting so many challenges to our mandate for supporting writers from different regions of the world, it makes it all the more meaningful that Art Omi is able to collaborate with HBKU Press to bring these two talented writers to our residency programme.”
Award-winning author Taha is a writer at heart, an electrical engineer by training, and an advocate for domestic abuse victims by choice. She is the author of Shadows of Damascus (Soul Mate Publishing, 2014), Bitter Almonds (HBKU Press, 2016), and Lost in Thyme (HBKU Press, 2018). Taha was born in Kuwait to a Syrian mother and a Palestinian father and immigrated to the US as a result of the Gulf War in 1990. She earned a master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Malluhi was born to Syrian immigrants in the United States. Her life, spent living between the US and Qatar, has greatly impacted her writing. She feels that much of her work bears witness to competing paradigms, traditional and progressive, spiritual and secular, Islamic and Western. Recently, she began her MFA Creative Writing Programme at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Her short story, The Know-dom, was a prize winner in Chatham University’s “Crossing Borders” contest. Malluhi has also worked on documentaries and received an Al-Jazeera Award for the ?lm From Victims of Poverty to Victims of Abuse, which focused on domestic worker abuse.
The inclusion of two writers chosen by a Qatari publishing house as a result of HBKU Press’ and Art Omi’s collaboration coincides with the Year of Culture Qatar – USA.
“HBKU Press initiated this collaboration with the aim of providing Arab writers with a much-need avenue to develop their skills in a dedicated environment while taking advantage of the guidance and support of professionals in the industry,” explained Bachar Chebaro, executive director of HBKU Press.
DW Gibson, director, Art Omi: Writers, said: “With the Covid pandemic presenting so many challenges to our mandate for supporting writers from different regions of the world, it makes it all the more meaningful that Art Omi is able to collaborate with HBKU Press to bring these two talented writers to our residency programme.”
Award-winning author Taha is a writer at heart, an electrical engineer by training, and an advocate for domestic abuse victims by choice. She is the author of Shadows of Damascus (Soul Mate Publishing, 2014), Bitter Almonds (HBKU Press, 2016), and Lost in Thyme (HBKU Press, 2018). Taha was born in Kuwait to a Syrian mother and a Palestinian father and immigrated to the US as a result of the Gulf War in 1990. She earned a master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Malluhi was born to Syrian immigrants in the United States. Her life, spent living between the US and Qatar, has greatly impacted her writing. She feels that much of her work bears witness to competing paradigms, traditional and progressive, spiritual and secular, Islamic and Western. Recently, she began her MFA Creative Writing Programme at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Her short story, The Know-dom, was a prize winner in Chatham University’s “Crossing Borders” contest. Malluhi has also worked on documentaries and received an Al-Jazeera Award for the ?lm From Victims of Poverty to Victims of Abuse, which focused on domestic worker abuse.
The inclusion of two writers chosen by a Qatari publishing house as a result of HBKU Press’ and Art Omi’s collaboration coincides with the Year of Culture Qatar – USA.