JORDAN ELGRABLY LOS ANGELES-MONTPELLIER (Editor-in-Chief) is a Moroccan-French and American writer and translator. His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and the Paris Review. Founder and Editor-in-chief of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001–2020). He is the editor of Stories From the Center of the World (City Lights 2024), and co-editor with Malu Halasa of Sumūd: a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories Press 2025). Based in Montpellier, France and California, he tweets at Blue Sky.

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RANA ASFOUR AMMAN-LONDON (Executive Editor) has lived and worked in Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, the US, and the UK. A Jordanian writer and book reviewer, her work has appeared in such publications as The Guardian UK and The National/UAE. In addition to her writing experience, Rana has worked in radio and TV in Amman, and has been a literary translator from Arabic and French to English. Rana tweets at @bookfabulous.

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MOHAMMAD RABIE BERLIN-CAIRO (Arabic Editor) is a writer and editor, born in Cairo in 1978. He has published four novels in Arabic, Kawkab Anbar, Year of the Dragon, Otared and History of the Gods of Egypt. Otared appears in an English translation by Robin Moger, which was nominated for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016. Rabie served as an editor in Altanweer publishing house, Cairo (2013-2018) and Alkarma publishers, Cairo (2018-2020). Presently he manages the Khan Aljanub Arabic bookstore in Berlin, which he cofounded in 2020.

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LARA VERGNAUD  MONTPELLIER (Managing Editor) is a Tunisian-American editor and literary translator, as well as a writer. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and more. Her memoir Untranslatable will be published by Catapult in early 2027. Lara was born in Tunisia, grew up in the United States, and currently lives in southern France.

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ABDELRAHMAN ELGENDY LONDON (Literary Editor)  is a writer and translator from Cairo. His memoir, Huna, is forthcoming in 2026 from Hogarth, Penguin Random House. A winner of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, he holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh, and his work appears in publications including The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and Guernica. His poetry and prose translations from Arabic appear in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. ElGendy’s work has received awards or fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the de Groot Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Arab American National Museum, among others. You can find him at www.abdelrahmanelgendy.com and on Instagram @abdelrahman_elgendy95

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SALEEM HADDAD LISBON (Fiction Editor) The writing of Saleem Haddad writing spans novels, short stories, essays, film and television. His debut novel, Guapa (2016), won the Polari Prize and was awarded a Stonewall Honour. His second novel, Floodlines, will be published in February 2026. His writing has been supported by institutions such as The Corporation of Yaddo and the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. He is based in Lisbon, with roots in London, Beirut and Amman.

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NATALIE JARUDI MONTPELLIER-BEIRUT (Executive Director) is a business development specialist and consultant with a background in publishing, the arts, the non-profit sector, sustainability, and education. She focuses on integrated business planning for early-stage start-ups and mission-driven organizations, helping them establish sustainable sources of revenue while remaining true to their vision. Drawing on experience across diverse industries, she has coached women entrepreneurs and designed training programs that strengthen communications, operations, and brand alignment. Holding a BA from Colgate University and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, she works with mission-driven organizations rooted in social and environmental justice.

Natalie brings whole-systems thinking to business strategy and organizational development. Her consulting emphasizes building resilient company cultures, refining systems and procedures, and creating pathways for long-term financial and environmental sustainability. She partners with leadership teams to refine strategy, strengthen communications, develop systems and procedures, establish reliable sales channels, and cultivate resilient company cultures that balance purpose with performance.

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SELMA TABTI • MONTPELLIER (Marketing & Publishing Intern) is a French master’s student in Publishing at the University of Montpellier, where she obtained her BA in Modern Literature. Raised along the Côte d’Azur, she has been a Montpellier resident for five years, with the exception of a year spent in England at Royal Holloway, University of London, for her final undergraduate year. Having been a reader of TMR, Selma is honored to be joining the team at this stage of her career. When she is not busy working, studying, or reading, she enjoys traveling, discovering new artists, and visiting artistic spaces.

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SALAR ABDOH — is an Iranian novelist and essayist who divides much of his time between New York and Tehran. He is the author of the novels Poet Game(2000), Opium (2004), Tehran At Twilight (2014), and Out of Mesopotamia (2020) and the editor and translator of the anthology Tehran Noir (2014). He also teaches in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York at the City University of New York. Abdoh seeks to help Iran re-engage with the Arab world and convey more of Iranian culture to the west. Salar Abdoh at Goodreads. His latest novel is A Nearby Country Called Love.

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MAI AL-NAKIB — was born in Kuwait and spent the first six years of her life in London, Edinburgh, and St. Louis, Missouri. Mai holds a PhD in English literature from Brown University and, for twenty years, taught English and Comparative Literature as Associate Professor at Kuwait University. Her academic research and publications have focused on cultural politics in Kuwait and the Middle East more broadly, with a special emphasis on citizenship, feminism, and postcolonial issues.

Her short story collection, The Hidden Light of Objects, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014 and reissued by Saqi Books in 2025. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award. Her debut novel, An Unlasting Home, was published by Mariner Books in the US and Saqi Books in the UK. Her short stories, poetry, and occasional essays have appeared in various publications, including Ninth Letter, The First Line, After the Pause, World Literature Today, Rowayat, The Markaz Review, and the BBC World Service. She lives and writes in Kuwait.

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NEKTARIA ANASTASIADOU is the 2019 winner of the Zografeios Agon, a Greek-language literary award founded in 19th-century Constantinople. In 2023, she represented Turkey and Greece as a visiting fellow at the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program. Her debut novel, A Recipe for Daphne, was shortlisted for the 2022 Runciman Award, longlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award, and a finalist with an Honorable Mention for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her second novel, Στα Πόδια της Αιώνιας Άνοιξης/Beneath the Feet of Eternal Spring, written in Istanbul Greek, was published by Papadopoulos in 2023. Anastasiadou’s writing has also been included in syllabi at the University of Iowa, Boğaziçi University, Bilkent University, and Boston College.

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IASON ATHANASIADIS ATHENS — is a TMR contributing editor and a Mediterranean-focused multimedia journalist based between Athens, Istanbul, and Tunis. He uses all media to recount the story of how we can adapt to the era of climate change, mass migration, and the misapplication of distorted modernities. He studied Arabic and Modern Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford, Persian and Contemporary Iranian Studies in Tehran, and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard, before working for the United Nations between 2011 and 2018. He received the Anna Lindh Foundation’s Mediterranean Journalism Award for his coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011, and its 10th-anniversary alumni award for his commitment to using all media to tell stories of intercultural dialogue in 2017. Find him on Twitter @Iason11.

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AOMAR BOUM — is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles, where he is Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies. He is the author of Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco, and with Thomas K. Park the coauthor of the Historical Dictionary of Morocco. He is also the coauthor of The Holocaust and North Africa as well as A Concise History of the Middle East (2018) and most recently, with Mohamed Daadaoui, the coauthor of the Historical Dictionary of the Arab Uprisings (2020). Aomar is an aficionado of the graphic novel and will guest-edit a special edition of TMR on the graphic novel this summer. He was born and raised in the oasis of Mhamid, Foum Zguid in the Province of Tata, Morocco.

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BRAHIM El GUABLI — is a Black and Amazigh Indigenous scholar from Morocco, and an Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. His forthcoming book is entitled Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence. He’s at work on a second book project entitled Saharan Imaginations: Between Saharanism and Ecocare. His journal articles have appeared in PMLA, Interventions, the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Arab Studies Journal, META, and the Journal of North African Studies, among others. He is co-editor of the two forthcoming volumes of Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the “Years of Lead” (1966-1988) (Liverpool University Press) and Refiguring Loss: Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Cultural Production (Pennsylvania State University Press). He is a TMR Contributing Editor.

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MISCHA GERACOULIS — is a US-based journalist with roots in the Mediterranean. Her diverse writings and teaching philosophy, advocacy efforts, and approach to life are informed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, journalistic oath of ethics, and critical media literacy. Some of Mischa’s research topics include the Armenian Genocide, global refugee crises, rights to adequate housing and equitable education, and the multifaceted human condition. Her work has appeared in Middle East Eye, Truthout, LA Review of Books, The Guardian, Colorlines, Gomidas Institute, openDemocracy, and National Catholic Reporter among others. Mischa tweets @MGeracoulis.

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DEBORAH KAPCHAN — is a writer, translator and ethnographer specializing in North African Islam, art and poetry. A Guggenheim fellow, her works include Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition (1996), as well as Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Music and Trance in the Global Marketplace (2007). Her authored, translated and edited volume, Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Moroccan Contemporary Poetry (2020), was shortlisted for ALTA’s National Translation Prize for Poetry. She is the author/editor of: Intangible Rights: Cultural Heritage in Transit (2014) and Theorizing Sound Writing (2017). She has organized several symposia on religion, sound and art, and is a regularly invited speaker at international venues. Her latest work, Taking Leave, a memoir about her relation to the three religions of the book, is published by Duke University Press.

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FRANCISCO LETELIER — Based in Venice, California, Franciso Letelier is a Chilean American artist, muralist, activist and writer who bridges continents, weaving history and contemporary experiences, creating powerful and memorable work. For four decades, Letelier has created art that crosses disciplines and cultures while building connections between nations and individuals. He has been involved in projects throughout the Americas, Europe and the West Bank. Known also for his lectures, spoken word and writing, Letelier has been published in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post and other publications. He has received the LA Artcore award for contributions to Southern California culture and the SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) Siquieros Muralist Award. Find him on Twitter at @franlete.

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SHOLEH WOLPE — is an Iranian-born poet, writer, and librettist. She served as Poetry Editor of The Markaz Review from 2022 through 2025. Her most recent books include a new translation of 12^thcentury Sufi mystic poet Attar, The Invisible Sun (Harper Collins) and a memoir in verse, Abacus of Loss (Univ. of Arkansas Press). The memoir is also available from Visor Libros in a bilingual edition. Sholeh’s literary work includes seven collections of poetry, several plays, five books of translations and three anthologies, as well as texts and librettos for choir and opera. Her translations of The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton, 2017) and of Forugh Farrokhzad, the rebel poet of Iran in Sin (Univ. of Arkansas Press) have garnered awards and established Wolpé as a celebrated re-creator of Iranian literature. Her opera, Nava Avaz, was a 2025 recipient of Opera America Discovery Award.  She has lived and studied in Iran, Trinidad, the UK and U.S. Presently she is the Writer-In-Residence at UCI and divides her time between California and Barcelona.  For more information about her work visit her website. You’ll also find her on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

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