Elmaz Abinader

Elmaz Abinader (born 1954 in Pennsylvania) is an American author, poet, performer, English professor at Mills College and co-founder of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). She is of Lebanese descent. In 2000, she received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for her poetry collection "In the Country of My Dreams...".
Life.
Born in a small coal mining community in southwest Pennsylvania, she lived with her parents and her five siblings in a household strongly rooted in Lebanese tradition. Her childhood was spent helping out in her family store, attending Catholic church twice a day, and focusing on her schooling. Abinader and her siblings faced challenges due to their ethnicity.
Abinader received her B.A. in Writing and Communication from University of Pittsburgh in 1974. It was during this time that she embrace her heritage and wrote about her family’s history. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, School of the Arts Poetry Writing, in 1978. In 1985, she completed her PhD program at the University of Nebraska, English Fiction and Non-fiction Writing, where she taught English and creative writing.
Work.
Abinader's first book, "Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey from Lebanon" (Norton, 1991, University of Wisconsin, 1997), was published in 1997. This book, a memoir, crosses three generations of Lebanese and covers the challenges of finding a home away from their country. Her second publication, "In the Country of My Dreams...", is a collections of poetry focused on dislocation and its various forms. This collection won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Multi-cultural Poetry in 2000 and a Goldies Award for Literature. Along with her books, she has written and performed in several one-woman plays: "Under The Ramadan Moon," "Country of Origin," "32 Mohammeds," "Voices From the Siege," and "The Torture Quartet." Her play "Country of Origin" was performed at The Kennedy Center in 2009. Her plays have also been performed
Her passion for Abinader co-founded The Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), which holds workshops for writers of color, during the summer at the University of California Berkeley in 1999. Abinader is currently teaching creative writing at Mills College.