Clarissa Bitar is an accomplished Palestinian oud musician and composer hailing from Los Angeles, California. With a background in Music and a specialization in Ethnomusicology from UC Santa Barbara, Clarissa’s musical journey has been enriched by training under esteemed Arab oudists such as Simon Shaheen, Charbel Rouhana, and Bassam Saba. Their pe…

Bijhan Agha is a trans Persian-American comic artist living in Uruguay, and second-time podcast guest! This time, she joined us to talk about her latest superhero comic “The Legendary X-Knights” for which the Kickstarter comes out today! “The Legendary X-Knights” is about a group of diverse people working together to defeat monsters. They are all b…

Sheyam Ghieth is an artist, organizer, Egyptian propagandist, and repeat podcast guest after 4 years! Sheyam is a co-founder of Creators for Gaza, a SWANA-led mutual-aid network connecting artists and amplifiers with Palestinian families facing genocide. Check it out to donate or get involved as an artist! They also discuss their work drawing conne…

We’re back with an episode with Alia, Ellie, and Nadia talking about: – An incredible show Nadia saw called LINES about the interconnected histories of Palestine, Uganda, and the UK through prison systems – Participating in Palestine protests and college encampments around us (and how college students are doing a better job of building a movement a…

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, a children’s book about three girls who experience Palestine through bedtime stories. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations. Hannah talks abo…

Yaffa is a trans displaced Palestinian activist, engineer, death and birthing doula, peer support specialist, and artist. They are the Executive Director of Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity and recently released their book of poetry Blood Orange, raising funds for queer and trans Palestinian work. In this episode, Yaffa reads a poem …

Lamya H., author of Hijab Butch Blues, joined us for a wonderful episode! Lamya talks about the line between invisibility and hypervisibility as a brown person in hijab in the US, alternatively overlooked or policed. She discusses her path into Queer Muslim community as well as her mixed experiences in both Arab and Desi spaces as someone born in a…

Finlay Sarafa McHale is a queer Iraqi/Chaldean-American clinical social worker currently facilitating a free peer support group for queer SWANA people. They joined us for a wonderful conversation about how mental healthcare can be a tool for political liberation rather than means of detaching from it. Finlay discusses censorship and Zionism in the …

Leila Mire is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, as well as a dancer, choreographer, organizer, and sometimes disorganized person. She researches Palestinian dance and the role of dance in US and Israeli cultural imperialism. We discuss the misleading implications of certain “coexistence art” which locates interpersonal prejudic…

We got to have Amina Shareef Ali back for another episode! She was on the podcast all the way back in January 2021 (episode 147), and we now had a wonderful conversation about her upcoming album, In the Dark (Awake of Course), volume 2. In this episode, Amina describes the throughlines of the tracks, who was involved in the making of the album (sho…

We were joined by the wonderful Bijhan Agha, a Persian-American author and creator living in Uruguay. Bijhan talked about her wonderful creation, Kobra Olympus. Kobra is a trans, lesbian hijabi superhero with adventures that can be accessed and followed by you all if you get the comic when it comes out! In this episode, Bijhan and Ellie dive in to …

We start off this episode by asking an AI to write a script for our podcast and doing a reading (did the AI get it right?) Then we talk about our actual lives. We discuss the legal attacks on trans rights in several Southern US states, plus some random transphobes at Waffle House. We commiserate about the challenges and doubts we’ve been encounteri…

( See a walkthrough of Noor’s exhibit here! Hayati – My Life/My Love ) Noor Aldayeh is a visual artist from Los Angeles, California. She is an Honors Film and Media student at Emory University minoring in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies, and acts as a student photographer for the Office of Belonging Community and Justice at the university. Ou…

Alma Doumani is the bassist for Slave to Sirens, an all-women thrash metal band from Lebanon that gained international attention through the documentary Sirens, which depicts the lives of the band members over three years. Outside of music, Alma is also a photographer and video producer. In the episode, Alma talks us through her love for the comple…

Rayan Afif is a multi-media artist and theater maker of Egyptian and Lebanese descent making work that envisions queer SWANA futures. Rayan discussed some of their visual art which depicts dream physical spaces—including a mana’eesh cafe and queer SWANA drag race—and the importance of online community spaces when physical ones are not available. Th…

In this episode, we caught up with Rana Fayez, an Arab, non-binary, arts producer, musician/sound artist, DJ, archivist, and founder of YallaPunk. Rana told us how they started YallaPunk in 2016 in response to political attacks on the SWANA community and how the organization has evolved since then, including the festivals, language practice groups,…

It’s our 200th episode! Alia, Ellie, and Nadia celebrate with a deep and messy group chat. We recall the early days of the podcast and some tough lessons about trust learned along the way. Then we discuss the World Cup, the brief resurgence of pan-Arabism surrounding the Moroccan team, and what we think of discourse on migrant workers’ rights, LGBT…

Sarah Bitar is an actor, writer, and teaching artist from Lebanon. Since graduating from the Stella Adler School of Acting, she has been living and creating in NYC. Sarah joined us to talk about her experiences in both the Lebanese and New York theater scenes, and the relative challenges of finding space, funding, community, and consistency in each…

Elias Jahshan is a Palestinian/Lebanese-Australian journalist, writer and editor. He most recently edited the anthology This Arab Is Queer, which features eighteen queer Arab writers (including a good handful of former podcast guests) sharing stories across a variety of locations, experiences, and aesthetic styles. Elias joined us to talk about gro…

This week we were joined by Iranian-Canadian lawyer, researcher, and writer Aytak Dibavar for an episode focused on the recent uprisings in Iran following Jina (Mahsa) Amini’s murder by “morality” police. Aytak discussed aspects of the movement that have been neglected in mainstream media and discussion, including Jina’s Kurdish identity, its worki…

On August 30, 2021, we published a magical bicoastal, virtually-recorded episode with Amir Aram Ronaldo. We now have an in-person episode with them a little over a year later! On October 30, 2022, we (Alia, Nadia, and Aram) set out on an adventure in NYC on a Halloween bookstore crawl. Boba tea was had. Pickles were purchased at a bookstore that ha…

We’ve got a personal episode this week with Ellie, Alia, and Nadia! A lot of the discussion focuses on one particularly eventful day for Alia and Nadia that included: Alia attending a protest in solidarity with Iranian women’s rights, along with some friends from Iran, who discussed how optimism and political energy varies across micro-generations.…

Ahmed Sadkhan (The Healing Khan) is a queer activist and life coach specializing in inner alignment and inner child work. He is Lebanese-Iraqi and grew up in Berlin; during this episode, Ahmed discusses the work he has done internally and externally to examine the pieces of himself and his identities that have yet to receive needed care. Ahmed also…

Barrak Alzaid is an award-winning writer of memoir, prose, poetry and art criticism, as well as an educator and organizer of artistic community spaces. His current projects include his memoir Fabulous, about queer coming of age in Kuwait, and a speculative fiction novel grappling with the racial, class, and environmental circumstances of near-futur…

Hamzeh Daoud is a trans femme Palestinian researcher, organizer, and tech person originally from Amman, and currently based in Texas. She’s co-lead of the ongoing survey Presencing Ourselves: A Survey of LGBTQI+ Muslims in the U.S. (along with our recent guest Amara, and in partnership with Queer Crescent). **If this applies to you, you can take th…

You might remember Amara Ahmed from one of our very first guest episodes–and we were delighted to have her back! Amara is a researcher and PhD candidate based in the CA Bay Area. A trans Muslim of Mexican and Pakistani background, she is involved in queer Muslim community organizing in the area including the organization Queer Crescent. She joined …

Photo attribution: Trekky0623, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Just the hosts this week here with an unedited personal catch-up episode (Do y’all like these? Let us know!) Ellie talks about getting COVID (finally) and lots of things wrong with the world: from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to Moh…

It was such a joy to have Saudi-American podcaster, theater maker, and just overall awesome individual, Sid, as our guest for this episode! They had one of our co-hosts (Alia) on their podcast recently, so this was a really fun crossover. Sid hosts The Wayward World Podcast, which you all should subscribe to. On this episode, we discussed the creat…

Bashar Murad is a Palestinian singer, lyricist, director and composer based in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem. Bashar uses pop music and art as a vehicle to challenge stereotypes, normativity and to highlight social issues facing young generations of urban Palestinians. We were so excited to have Bashar on the pod to discuss his recent work, including hi…

We were thrilled to have Alireza Shojaian back on the podcast after his last episode three years ago! Alireza is an artist from Iran, previously in Beirut, and currently based in Paris whose work pushes boundaries in representation of queer bodies and sexuality. He discusses his veggie drawing series, made during a period of identity questioning, a…

Layla EO is a Jordanian-American artist, self taught illustrator, and overall creative, raised in Texas, currently living in Chicago, offering a more vibrant take on the world. Layla talks about using her bold color palette as an alternative to the infamous yellow filter usually used to portray our home countries in Hollywood. Many of her illustrat…

Amal Amer (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator of SWANA descent currently based in California. Through visual media, performance, and collective storytelling, they explore the tension between rootedness and movement in diaspora. Amer’s work reinterprets symbols and stories from SWANA cosmologies, holding space for quee…

Ahmad Ray is a queer activist and creator from Palestine, currently living in Canada and building a following on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Ranging from light to serious, their content focuses on glimpses of queer Arab life, Palestinian liberation, and social taboos within their communities. This episode focused on Ahmad’s challenges since imm…

Eman Abdelhadi is a second generation Palestinian-Egyptian academic, activist, and artist based in Chicago, IL. She’s also the subject of the upcoming documentary Coming Around, which follows her close and evolving relationship with her mother over the past six years, including Eman’s decision to come out as queer. Eman discussed what it was like t…

Samer Ghrawi is a Palestinian/Syrian-American musical artist based in California. With musical influences including Gospel, Soul, RnB, Arab pop, and older Arab music, his work sheds light on emotional struggles that are often swept under the rug. Samer tells us about growing up gay in a strict Christian environment and Arab in an overwhelmingly whi…

Tarek Mohamed (TT) is an Egyptian activist, scholar and writer currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at UC Irvine. We were thrilled to have Tarek back after his first episode in June 2020! Tarek discussed the time he spent in Egypt since our first conversation, and his concern over the shift in the political climate there. He noted a rise of mil…

Caitlin Abadir-Mullally (kt) is a Coptic-American installation and social practice artist based in Philadelphia. She works to create communities for those who live between spaces. Her research dives into fear, hybridity, queerness, collective thinking, grief, and cultural loss. Caitlin Abadir-Mullally works in sculpture, performance, and relationsh…

We wrapped up 2021 with a wonderful conversation with Mikey Amman, fellow Capricorn, who is working in higher ed; we talked about the importance of filling the roles of educators with people who will advocate for, and relate to, the students they serve. We discussed the challenges of navigating that system as a queer Arab; we also touched on findin…

Rolla Selbak is a Palestinian-American filmmaker, writer, and director whose work has pushed boundaries of representation for Arab, Muslim, and queer characters. We were so excited to have her back to catch up since her first episode, right at the beginning of the pandemic. Rolla’s recent projects include the short film “Finjan” (which you can watc…

Raed Rafei is a Lebanese filmmaker, researcher, and multimedia journalist, currently pursuing a PhD in film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It was a joy to have Raed back on the podcast after meeting him at the exhibit Mark for Redaction 3(!) years ago! We discussed Raed’s academic research on queer Lebanese filmmaker…

Mariam Bazeed is a nonbinary Egyptian immigrant, writer, editor, spoken word artist, performer, and cook living in Brooklyn. An alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and personal essays, Mariam received their MFA in Fiction from Hunter College. Their work in all genres is in print and online, and their plays have been presented in fe…

Pedro (project coordinator of The Love Tank’s London-based Queer Migrant Men Project) and Ali (volunteer with the project) joined us for this week’s episode! The QMM project was developed in response to the wide information gap in London among migrants, causing difficulty accessing sexual health services. When migrants don’t know the language, thei…

We’ve got a catchup episode with Ellie, Alia, and Nadia this week! We talk a little bit about our local disasters this week (Hurricane Ida and the new abortion laws in Texas). Then we need a mental break, so we play some hypothetical games (borrowed from the Just Between Us Podcast): “Would you stay with that cheater?” and “Are you a terrible paren…

This week, Alia, Nadia, and Ellie joined to catch up with Armenian-Palestinian-American Artivist Aram Ronaldo, who you might remember from the “Land Back episode.” This time, we focused on Aram’s work in theater, from the MENA-focused Golden Thread Productions in the Bay Area, to the wonderfully queer “Camp Morning Wood: A Very Naked Musical” in Ne…

Fadl Fakhouri is a Palestinian-American visual and multidisciplinary artist, currently based in NYC and pursuing an MFA at Columbia University. Their work considers borders of the state, identity, and interpersonal relationships in an effort to undo their oppressive nature, and sometimes includes film, installation, performance, and rocks. Fadl joi…

Fatima Elie, who goes by @fatimaelie is a Toronto based, Lebanese queer artist and film photographer. Her work, often documentary in style, showcases her love for her heritage and the world around her often seeing things others overlook. She is also a multidisciplinary artist who enjoys experimenting with the art of Arabic calligraphy along with mi…

Alia and Nebal (thank you Nebal for guest co-hosting!) got to talk to author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi about her newly released novel Savage Tongues! The novel examines gender constructs in Islam and the West, and the intersections of sexual desire and violence amidst the ongoing subjugation of the Middle East to imperialism. In the book, she ar…

This week we have an unfiltered, unedited personal episode with Nadia, Alia, and Ellie in the spirit of last year’s InsecuriTEA series. We discuss our thoughts on the label “activist,” the need for psychological realism in leftist organizing, and our feelings of political, personal, professional, and podcast burnout. We also discuss our respective …

This week Ellie, Alia, and Nadia discuss some of the lesser-known dealings of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, such as his massive investment in the video game company SNK. Why does this matter? These “soft-power” moves ensure that international corporations will pressure their governments not to sanction Saudi Arabia – despite the state’s h…

This week we’re catching up with Angie Assal (who you might remember from previous episodes) Lebanese-American artist, dancer, aspiring musician, and creator of Sound of Mazzika, a line of jewelry and more inspired by Arabic music and culture. Angie explains why she got started studying Arabic percussion, and how it also led her to practice the mar…