Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI)
The Poets

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist and filmmaker. His publications include, I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (al-Adab and City Lights) and Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press). He is Assistant Professor at New York University.

Elmaz Abinader won a 2000 Josephine Miles/ Pen Oakland Award for her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams. She is a co-founder of VONA, a summer workshop for writers-of-color.

Iman Mersal is an assistant professor of Arabic literature and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Alberta. A complete collection of her poetry is forthcoming from Sheep Meadow in 2008.

May Telmissany, a novelist, short story writer, translator and film critic, is an assistant professor of Arabic language and culture at the University of Ottawa.

RAWI’S Mission
To encourage Arab youth
To offer members a professional network
To urge members to publish their work in mainstream publications

Visit: http://rawi.org/CMS

Michael A. Frishkopf performs experi-mental works for nay (reed flute) and voice, inspired by mystical sounds of Islam, the Sufi dhikr. Michael is a musician, composer, and professor of ethno-musicology at the University of Alberta (Canada).

Seyh Galip’s Beauty and Love (Hüsn ü Ask) represents a startling explosion of brilliant creative energy coming at the end (1783) of a centuries-old tradition of mystical narrative romances in rhymed couplets (mesnevi) in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish. This striking Ottoman poem hangs tantalizingly suspended between allegory and myth as it dramatizes and makes concrete the metaphors of the psychic journey toward mystical union through a quest that takes the hero (Love) and his companions through a terrifying landscape peopled by demons, monsters, witches, and a dangerous princess in order to unite him with his beloved Beauty. Conceived and produced by Özgen Felek with Walter G. Andrews, choreographed by Carolina Pahde Mallarino, and danced by her company from the University of Michigan to music from the much-acclaimed work of Münir Beken, this performance is an exciting experimental attempt to reveal the emotional core of Ottoman mystical literature to western audiences. You will not want to miss this!

www-personal.umich.edu/~felek/beautyandlove