Jordan Elgrably

JORDAN ELGRABLY MONTPELLIER (Editor in Chief and Art Director) is a Franco-American journalist, editor and fiction writer of Moroccan heritage, whose work has appeared widely in the U.S. and Europe and in a number of anthologies and journals, such as the Paris Review, Salmagundi and Apulée. He is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz (2001–2020). His work in the cultural vanguard has won the support of many foundations and grants, including the Open Society Foundation, Mellon Foundation, the Ariane de Rothschild Foundation, HFPA Foundation, American Express and others. His new book as editor is Stories From the Center of the World (City Lights 2024). He is the editor with Malu Halasa of the fortcoming Sumūd: a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories Press, Oct. 22, 2024). Follow Jordan on Twitter.

Rana Asfour

RANA ASFOUR AMMAN-LONDON (Managing Editor) has lived, worked and been educated in Jordan, Lebanon, Abu Dhabi and the UK. A 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 translator from Arabic and French to English. Rana tweets at @bookfabulous.

Lina Mounzer

LINA MOUNZER BEIRUT-MONTREAL (Senior Editor) is a Lebanese writer and translator. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times and her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Freeman’s, The Washington Post, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Tales of Two Planets (Penguin 2020), and Best American Essays 2022 (Harper Collins 2022).

Malu Halasa

MALU HALASA LONDON (Literary Editor) is a London-based writer and editor. Her latest book as editor is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi 2023). Her six previous co-edited anthologies include Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, with coedited with Zaher Omareen & Nawara Mahfoud; The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design, with Rana Salam; and the short series: Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images, with Rosanne Khalaf, and Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations, with Maziar Bahari. She was managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library; a founding editor of Tank Magazine and Editor at Large for Portal 9. As a freelance journalist in London, she has covered wide-ranging subjects, from water as occupation in Israel/Palestine to Syrian comics during the present-day conflict. Her books, exhibitions and lectures chart a changing Middle East. Malu Halasa’s debut novel, Mother of All Pigs was reviewed by the New York Times as “a microcosmic portrait of … a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline.” She tweets at @halasamalu.

Mohammad Rabie

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.

Sarah Naili

SARAH NAILI MONTPELLIER (PR and Production Manager) Trained as a lawyer in European and international law, Sarah continued her studies in Communications and Marketing. She has a 10-year international career in various sectors, from e-commerce to SSE (social & solidarity economy), via audiovisual and tourism, and most recently in cooperation with civil society in the MENA region. Her passions: nature, yoga and travelling alone; she’s crossed Central America from Costa Rica to Mexico in a backpack with her yoga mat. As a volunteer at various festivals, she loves the effervescence of the cultural scene and showcasing artists. A great listener, she questions her fellow human beings like a human explorer. A traveler and Mediterranean at heart, Sarah lived in Barcelona and Tunis before returning to her native Montpellier.

Rayyan al-Shawaf

RAYYAN AL-SHAWAF BEIRUT-MALTA (Deputy Editor) is a book critic and editor based in Malta. His reviews and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Globe and Mail, Miami Herald, PopMatters, San Francisco Chronicle, Toronto Star, The Markaz Review, Truthdig, Washin​gton Post and elsewhere. His debut novel, When All Else Fails, was published by Interlink Books.

Lisa Hamou

LISA HAMOU GRANADA (French & Spanish Editor) is anthropologist and cultural manager. She trained in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Granada and in international relations, the European Union and the Mediterranean at Madrid’s Complutense University, as well as in festival and cultural event management, cultural marketing and digital communications, journalism and cultural communications. She has worked in artistic direction and production for Arab music festivals and the emerging artistic scene, on cultural cooperation projects with Palestine and Lebanon, and organization of artistic residencies, cultural events and production of shows, at the Arabesques Festival, Visa For Music, Euro-Arab Foundation, Institut Européen de la Méditerranée, Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures and Civilizations in the Mediterranean.

Sholeh Wolpé

SHOLEH WOLPÉ LOS ANGELES-BARCELONA (Poetry Editor) was born in Iran and lived in Trinidad and the UK before settling in the US. She is a poet, playwright and librettist. Her most recent book, Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse (March 2022) is hailed by Ilya Kaminsky as a book “that created its own genre—a thrill of lyric combined with the narrative spell.” Her literary work includes a dozen books, several plays, an oratorio/opera, and several  multi-genre performance pieces. Her translations of Attar and Forugh Farrokhzad have garnered awards and established Sholeh Wolpé as a celebrated re-creator of Persian poetry into English. Recently she was the subject of a Metropolitan Museum of Art Spotlight, The Long Journey Home. Presently a writer-in-residence at UCI, she divides her time between Los Angeles and Barcelona. For more information about her work visit her website. You’ll also find her on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Megan Jarrell

MEGAN JARRELL PARIS (Social Media Manager) is an American graduate in Global Communications from the American University of Paris. She is also an editor at AUP’s student-led publication, The Peacock, and has recently written and published several critical research articles for Emerj Artificial Intelligence on a variety of topics.

Jenine Abboushi

JENINE ABBOUSHI — is a senior writer and contributing editor with The Markaz Review. A Palestinian-American writer, freelancer and traveler, especially around home, she lived for many years in the United States, Palestine, Morocco and Lebanon, and now makes her home in Marseille. She earned a a B.A. from Birzeit University in Palestine, Masters in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia and a PhD from Harvard in Comparative Literature. Jenine is at work on a second novel that will be part of a trilogy. Follow her on Twitter, @jenineabboushi.

Salar Abdoh

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.

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.

Iason Athanasiadis

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.

Aomar Boum

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.

Melissa Chemam

MELISSA CHEMAM —A native of Paris with roots in Algeria, Melissa is a widely-published journalist and radio reporter (BBC, RFI) and author of a book on Bristol’s music scene, Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone. She is a contributing editor at TMR who writes on music, art, politics and film. As a film researcher she has worked with Raoul Peck on his James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro and his forthcoming film on Frantz Fanon. She has been based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia), and Bristol, UK. She’s travelled from Italy to Haiti, via Tunisia, Liberia, South Africa, India, Mexico, Niger, Turkey and Iraq. Her Twitter handle is @melissachemam.

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.

Mischa Geracoulis

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.

Francisco Letelier

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.