Lisa Suhair Majaj (born 1960) is a

Palestinian-American Palestinian Americans ( ar, فلسطينيو أمريكا) are Americans who are of full or partial Palestinians, Palestinian descent. It is unclear when the first Palestinian immigrants arrived in the United States, but it is believed that the ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

and

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

. Born in

Hawarden, Iowa Hawarden is a city in Sioux County, Iowa, United States. The population was 2,700 at the time of the 2020 census. It is located on the Big Sioux River. History Hawarden was platted in 1882. It was named for Hawarden Castle, the Welsh home of s ...

, Majaj was raised in

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

. She earned a B.A. in English literature from

American University of Beirut The American University of Beirut (AUB) ( ar, الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت) is a private, non-sectarian, and independent university chartered in New York with its campus in Beirut, Lebanon. AUB is governed by a private, aut ...

and an M.A. in English Literature, an M.A. in American Culture and a PhD in American Culture from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. In 2001, she moved to Nicosia,

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...

. Her poetry and essays have been widely published. In 2008, she was awarded the Del Sol Press Annual Poetry Prize for her poetry manuscript '' Geographies of Light''.Sazzad, Rehnuma (2013) "Lisa Suhair Majaj’s Geographies of Light: the Lighted Landscape of Hope (Book Review)," Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Vol. 11: Iss. 1, Article 11. "In difficult times, poets and writers have always provided lifelines."

Works

*Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (Garland, 2000) *Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels (Syracuse University Press, 2002) *These Words (chapbook, 2003) *Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab American Writer and Artist (McFarland Publishing, 2002) *Geographies of Light, 2009 *Guidlines - by Lisa Suhair Maja

References

External links

Lisa Suhair Majaj

Institute for Middle East Understanding Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) is a 501(c)(3) Pro-Palestinian non-profit advocacy organization. In 2006 it received a grant from the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development which was used to undertake the first co ...

* Naomi Shihab Nye reads and discusses Lisa Suhair Majaj's "Guidelines

Living people American writers of Palestinian descent American poets University of Michigan alumni American women poets 1960 births 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers {{Palestine-writer-stub https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/majaj-lisa-suhair-1960