Michael Akladios is a Lecturer in History at the University of Toronto and the Founder and Executive Director of Egypt Migrations, a Canadian non-profit Corporation. Michael holds a PhD in History from York University. His research explores the migration and institutionalization of Egyptians in the context of religious revival in Egypt and debates over pluralism and multiculturalism in Cold War Canada and the United States. Michael has published extensively on the topic of Egyptian immigration to North America, both in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes as well as popular publications such as Mada Masr, Public Orthodoxy, Active History, The New Arab, and The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). You can follow him on Twitter @michaelakladios, and visit www.michaelakladios.com to learn more.
Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen, Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. She earned her MFA from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997–’99. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Storysouth, Guernica, The Common, and The Millions. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in Nizwa, Banipal, in Translation, World Literature Today, and Washington Square Review. Her bilingual book of short stories, Three Stories From Cairo (trans. with Mohamed Metwalli), was published in 2011. A collection of stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, appeared in 2013. Currently, Gretchen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. Her debut novel Confessions of Knight Errant: Drifters, Thieves and Ali Baba’s Treasure was published by Cune Press, in 2022.
Rachel Thompson (she/her) is a Settler-Canadian of Scottish and European ancestry currently living in South Sinai, Egypt. She’s an editorial collective member of Room magazine (Canada’s oldest feminist literary journal), the author of a book of poetry, Galaxy (Anvil Press, 2011), and a creative writing instructor and writing community host at rachelthompson.co.
Melanie Carter is a Senior Instructor and Associate Chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. She also directs the university’s Common Reading Experience, an initiative designed to encourage students to read for pleasure and personal enrichment. In addition to teaching academic writing and creative writing, she is currently working on two long projects: a poetry manuscript and an extended essay focusing on the environment.
Amuna Wagner is a German-Sudanese writer, journalist, and educator. She studied International Relations and Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a special interest in decolonising processes and the politics of gender. In her work, Amuna explores the many ways through which we heal ourselves and others: ancestry, identity, pleasure activism, feminist spiritualities, and creative knowledge production. She works as North Africa correspondent at OkayAfrica and is currently pursuing an MFA in Literary Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Amuna co-founded and edits Kandaka, a platform that imagines feminist futures at the intersection of art and activism. She was awarded the Tejumola Olaniyan Fellowship at The Africa Institute in Sharjah (2023) and selected as Writer in Residence at the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Ghana (2021). Her work has been published on Internazionale, OkayAfrica, Project Myopia, Africa Is a Country, The Pan African Music Magazine, Amaka Studio, Egyptian Streets, Skin Deep, Meeting of Minds, shado mag, Rosa Mag, sweetthangzine as well as part of auftakt festival (2023) and Fringe of Colour (2021). She lives between Cologne, Germany and Cairo, Egypt.