Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader is a poet, playwright, memoirist, and educator whose work spans themes of identity, heritage, and the immigrant experience. Born in 1954 in Pennsylvania to Lebanese American parents, Abinader’s multicultural upbringing influences her artistic vision and storytelling.

In 1991, Abinader published her memoir Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon (Norton), which chronicles her family’s immigration to the United States and their experiences as Lebanese Americans. Her other notable works include This House, My Bones (Willow Books, 2014) and In the Country of My Dreams (Sufi Warrior Publishing, 1999). Her play “Country of Origin” has been performed at venues including the Arabesque Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC (2009). 

Abinader won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2000, and a production of her play “Country of Origin” received two Portland Area Theater Alliance’s Drammy Awards for musical composition and accompaniment in 1999. Abinader has received prestigious fellowships and residencies, including a Fulbright Senior Scholarship for Egypt (1998–1999) and residencies at Can Serrat Artist Residency in Spain (2013), the MacDowell Colony (2006), Montalvo Arts Center (2006), and Château de La Vigny in Switzerland (2003). 

Abinader has taught creative writing and literature at universities and institutions across the United States, including Mills College, where she served as the endowed chair in 2003.