Deadline: 12 March 2011
The conference will feature a keynote address, live musical performances, a workshop on Arab Women's health, a photo exhibit, poetry and a one-woman play.
4th Annual Bay Area Arab Women's Conference
Saturday March 12th, 2011
San Mateo Public Library
55 West 3rd Avenue, San Mateo, CA
Register by March 9th, 2011. Form is available here or call 415-664-2200 to register by phone.
This year, the Arab Cultural and Community Center's Arab Women's Conference aims to highlight the voices and experiences of Arab women, as told in their own words. The conference will examine and address challenges impacting Arab women on various issues including, but not limited to mental health, political activism, artistic expression, familial relationships, community constructions of gender, and the relationships between Arab women in the US and their homelands. The conference will feature a keynote address, live musical performances, a workshop on Arab Women's health, a photo exhibit, poetry and a one-woman play. Through these forms of expression, we will indeed address the many intersections of oppression facing Arab women, while also stimulating a community conversation about our role as women in holistic community building. The conference will illuminate diverse, powerful and non-conventional narratives of Arab women that have committed their life's work to challenging injustice through various mediums and who have become inspirational to our community. The ACCC is privileged to host an exceptional group of Arab women and to honor their contributions to our community.
2011 Speaker Biographies
Elmaz AbinaderAuthor Elmaz Abinader has won the 2002 Goldies Award for Literature, a PEN/Josephine Miles award for poetry and two Drammies (Oregon's Drama Circle) for her performances. Author of a memoir, Children of the Roojme, a collection of poetry, In The Country of my Dreams... and several one-woman shows, including Country of Origin, she has a forthcoming poetry collection, Coming Clean, a memoir, The Water Cycle, and a novel, When Silence was Frightening. Her work is widely anthologized. She is a co-founder of the VONA that holds workshops for Writers of Color, and teaches at Mills College.
Laila Al-ArianLaila Al-Arian has been a writer and producer for Al Jazeera English in Washington DC since May, 2008. Laila has produced stories about Iraqi refugees in the United States, the trial of Aafia Siddiqui in New York, the case of Guantanamo Bay "child solider" Omar Khadr, and a portrait of a Palestinian-American community in Florida during the 2009 Gaza war. Prior to working at Al Jazeera, Laila was a writer and researcher for "The Nation" magazine in New York City. With journalist and writer Chris Hedges, Laila co-authored, "Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians" (Nation Books, 2008) about war crimes and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The book is based on their 2007 Nation magazine investigative piece "The Other War," which was selected as one of Project Censored's 25 most important under-covered news stories of 2008. Laila received an M.S. degree from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2006. Her work has appeared in Alternet, "The Independent," "The Guardian", "The Australian", United Press International, and the "Washington Report on Middle East Affairs," among other publications. She has also interned at "USA Today." Aside from her many accomplishments, Laila is also the daughter of Palestinian political prisoner Sami Al-Arian, who was imprisoned in the hysteria that followed the 9/11 tragedy. He was targeted for his political beliefs on Palestine, as well as First Amendment-protect activities. Laila has spoken about journalism and civil liberties post 9/11 at conferences and universities across the United States, including UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Colby College, and Columbia University.
Leila BuckLeila Buck is an Arab American actress, writer and teaching artist. Her award-winning solo show, ISite, about growing up between the U.S. and the Arab world, has toured the U.S., Europe and China. Her second play, In the Crossing, about her experience in Lebanon with her Jewish husband during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, and the challenges of telling that story, was first performed in the Public Theater's New Work Now! Festival 2006 (Dir. Jo Bonney), and has since been developed with the support of the Brooklyn Museum, Epic Theatre Center, the Public Theater and New York Theatre Workshop, and the Lark Play Development Center, where it was chosen out of over 600 scripts as a finalist for Playwrights' Week 2009. In the Crossing will receive a mini-run in the Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival this March: www.womencenterstage.org.
In 2008, Leila was selected as one of twelve writers out of over 700 to be part of the Public Theater's inaugural Emerging Writers Group. The play she began in that year, Hkeelee, received a Special Jury Prize from the Middle East America grant co-sponsored by Silk Road (Chicago), the Lark (New York), and Golden Thread Productions (San Francisco), and is currently being developed with MAPP international productions, NYC: www.mappinternational.org.
In November 2008 Leila performed her monologue One, about an Arab-American canvassing for Obama, for Epic's First Vote event, alongside work by renowned writers and performers including Neil LaBute, Craig Lucas, Kathleen Chalfant, David Strathairn, Nilajah Sun and Tony Kushner.
Over the past ten years Leila has been a founding member and Education Director of Nibras Arab-American Theater Collective, Artistic Director of Nisaa Arab-American Women's Collective, and a writer and performer for the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. She co-created and edited Nibras' debut play, Sajjil (Record), which won Best Ensemble Performance at the NY Fringe Festival 2002, and served as head producer with Nibras and New York Theatre Workshop of ASWAT: Voices of Palestine, a series of readings of plays from and about Palestine, as well as numerous workshops, readings, and presentations by Nibras from 2001-2007.
As an actress Leila has worked with writers and directors including Kia Corthron, Annie Dorsen, Yussef el Guindi, Thomas Kail (In the Heights), Isis Misdary, Naomi Wallace and Blanka Zizka. She is currently touring internationally as an actress in AFTERMATH, based on interviews with Iraqi refugees, by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank, writers of THE EXONERATED, after a Drama-League nominated run at New York Theatre Workshop.
Leila has conducted workshops on playwriting, storytelling and drama for cross-cultural engagement at conferences, universities, schools and cultural centers across the U.S. and around the world, most recently in Denmark as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy. Her prose, poetry and critical essays have appeared in American Theatre and Mizna magazine, and her theatrical work has been featured in The New York Times and Lebanon's Daily Star. Her essay on Arab-American political theater can be found in Etching Our Own Image: Voices from the Arab American Art Movement, from Cambridge Scholars Press. Leila holds a Master's in Drama for Education about the Arab World from NYU, is conversationally fluent in French, Spanish and Arabic and has performed, lived, taught and traveled in more than 18 countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Arab World.
Lily Marina is a Palestinian-American high school student in her senior year. She enjoys composing, musical improvisation, and writing poetry.
Noor ElashiNoor Elashi is a writer who currently lives in New York City where she is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at the New School, where she also co-founded the arts organization, Project Palestine. She is the daughter of Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, or the HLF, which was the largest Muslim charity in the United States until the Bush administration shut it down three months after Sept. 11, 2001. Noor is an advocate for her father and the Holy Land Five, who are the five defendants of the HLF case. These Palestinian-American humanitarians were convicted of giving material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Palestinian charities called zakat committees that prosecutors alleged were fronts for Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 1995. The guilty verdicts came a year after the first trial, which ended in mistrial in 2007 after jurors deliberated for 19 days and failed to reach a verdict on most counts. The results of the second trial baffled defense attorneys who pointed out that USAID (United States Agency for International Development), Red Cross, the UN and many inter- national NGOs donated to the same charities listed on the HLF indictment.
More information here.
The conference will feature a keynote address, live musical performances, a workshop on Arab Women's health, a photo exhibit, poetry and a one-woman play.
4th Annual Bay Area Arab Women's Conference
Saturday March 12th, 2011
San Mateo Public Library
55 West 3rd Avenue, San Mateo, CA
Register by March 9th, 2011. Form is available here or call 415-664-2200 to register by phone.
This year, the Arab Cultural and Community Center's Arab Women's Conference aims to highlight the voices and experiences of Arab women, as told in their own words. The conference will examine and address challenges impacting Arab women on various issues including, but not limited to mental health, political activism, artistic expression, familial relationships, community constructions of gender, and the relationships between Arab women in the US and their homelands. The conference will feature a keynote address, live musical performances, a workshop on Arab Women's health, a photo exhibit, poetry and a one-woman play. Through these forms of expression, we will indeed address the many intersections of oppression facing Arab women, while also stimulating a community conversation about our role as women in holistic community building. The conference will illuminate diverse, powerful and non-conventional narratives of Arab women that have committed their life's work to challenging injustice through various mediums and who have become inspirational to our community. The ACCC is privileged to host an exceptional group of Arab women and to honor their contributions to our community.
2011 Speaker Biographies
Elmaz AbinaderAuthor Elmaz Abinader has won the 2002 Goldies Award for Literature, a PEN/Josephine Miles award for poetry and two Drammies (Oregon's Drama Circle) for her performances. Author of a memoir, Children of the Roojme, a collection of poetry, In The Country of my Dreams... and several one-woman shows, including Country of Origin, she has a forthcoming poetry collection, Coming Clean, a memoir, The Water Cycle, and a novel, When Silence was Frightening. Her work is widely anthologized. She is a co-founder of the VONA that holds workshops for Writers of Color, and teaches at Mills College.
Laila Al-ArianLaila Al-Arian has been a writer and producer for Al Jazeera English in Washington DC since May, 2008. Laila has produced stories about Iraqi refugees in the United States, the trial of Aafia Siddiqui in New York, the case of Guantanamo Bay "child solider" Omar Khadr, and a portrait of a Palestinian-American community in Florida during the 2009 Gaza war. Prior to working at Al Jazeera, Laila was a writer and researcher for "The Nation" magazine in New York City. With journalist and writer Chris Hedges, Laila co-authored, "Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians" (Nation Books, 2008) about war crimes and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The book is based on their 2007 Nation magazine investigative piece "The Other War," which was selected as one of Project Censored's 25 most important under-covered news stories of 2008. Laila received an M.S. degree from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2006. Her work has appeared in Alternet, "The Independent," "The Guardian", "The Australian", United Press International, and the "Washington Report on Middle East Affairs," among other publications. She has also interned at "USA Today." Aside from her many accomplishments, Laila is also the daughter of Palestinian political prisoner Sami Al-Arian, who was imprisoned in the hysteria that followed the 9/11 tragedy. He was targeted for his political beliefs on Palestine, as well as First Amendment-protect activities. Laila has spoken about journalism and civil liberties post 9/11 at conferences and universities across the United States, including UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Colby College, and Columbia University.
Leila BuckLeila Buck is an Arab American actress, writer and teaching artist. Her award-winning solo show, ISite, about growing up between the U.S. and the Arab world, has toured the U.S., Europe and China. Her second play, In the Crossing, about her experience in Lebanon with her Jewish husband during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, and the challenges of telling that story, was first performed in the Public Theater's New Work Now! Festival 2006 (Dir. Jo Bonney), and has since been developed with the support of the Brooklyn Museum, Epic Theatre Center, the Public Theater and New York Theatre Workshop, and the Lark Play Development Center, where it was chosen out of over 600 scripts as a finalist for Playwrights' Week 2009. In the Crossing will receive a mini-run in the Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival this March: www.womencenterstage.org.
In 2008, Leila was selected as one of twelve writers out of over 700 to be part of the Public Theater's inaugural Emerging Writers Group. The play she began in that year, Hkeelee, received a Special Jury Prize from the Middle East America grant co-sponsored by Silk Road (Chicago), the Lark (New York), and Golden Thread Productions (San Francisco), and is currently being developed with MAPP international productions, NYC: www.mappinternational.org.
In November 2008 Leila performed her monologue One, about an Arab-American canvassing for Obama, for Epic's First Vote event, alongside work by renowned writers and performers including Neil LaBute, Craig Lucas, Kathleen Chalfant, David Strathairn, Nilajah Sun and Tony Kushner.
Over the past ten years Leila has been a founding member and Education Director of Nibras Arab-American Theater Collective, Artistic Director of Nisaa Arab-American Women's Collective, and a writer and performer for the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. She co-created and edited Nibras' debut play, Sajjil (Record), which won Best Ensemble Performance at the NY Fringe Festival 2002, and served as head producer with Nibras and New York Theatre Workshop of ASWAT: Voices of Palestine, a series of readings of plays from and about Palestine, as well as numerous workshops, readings, and presentations by Nibras from 2001-2007.
As an actress Leila has worked with writers and directors including Kia Corthron, Annie Dorsen, Yussef el Guindi, Thomas Kail (In the Heights), Isis Misdary, Naomi Wallace and Blanka Zizka. She is currently touring internationally as an actress in AFTERMATH, based on interviews with Iraqi refugees, by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank, writers of THE EXONERATED, after a Drama-League nominated run at New York Theatre Workshop.
Leila has conducted workshops on playwriting, storytelling and drama for cross-cultural engagement at conferences, universities, schools and cultural centers across the U.S. and around the world, most recently in Denmark as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy. Her prose, poetry and critical essays have appeared in American Theatre and Mizna magazine, and her theatrical work has been featured in The New York Times and Lebanon's Daily Star. Her essay on Arab-American political theater can be found in Etching Our Own Image: Voices from the Arab American Art Movement, from Cambridge Scholars Press. Leila holds a Master's in Drama for Education about the Arab World from NYU, is conversationally fluent in French, Spanish and Arabic and has performed, lived, taught and traveled in more than 18 countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Arab World.
Lily Marina is a Palestinian-American high school student in her senior year. She enjoys composing, musical improvisation, and writing poetry.
Noor ElashiNoor Elashi is a writer who currently lives in New York City where she is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at the New School, where she also co-founded the arts organization, Project Palestine. She is the daughter of Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation, or the HLF, which was the largest Muslim charity in the United States until the Bush administration shut it down three months after Sept. 11, 2001. Noor is an advocate for her father and the Holy Land Five, who are the five defendants of the HLF case. These Palestinian-American humanitarians were convicted of giving material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Palestinian charities called zakat committees that prosecutors alleged were fronts for Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 1995. The guilty verdicts came a year after the first trial, which ended in mistrial in 2007 after jurors deliberated for 19 days and failed to reach a verdict on most counts. The results of the second trial baffled defense attorneys who pointed out that USAID (United States Agency for International Development), Red Cross, the UN and many inter- national NGOs donated to the same charities listed on the HLF indictment.
More information here.
