Selected as 1 of 6 fellows for the Open City Fellowship, a 9-month narrative nonfiction fellowship for emerging writers by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Open City is an online magazine that takes the real-time pulse of metropolitan Asian America as it’s being lived on the streets of New York city.
Over the course of the fellowship, I wrote 3 different stories focused on both the personal and the collective:
Baklava That Tastes Like Home
An essay about Marhaf Homsi, a 72-year-old baker, who fled Syria only to arrive in Brooklyn, where he found solace and sweetness in the craft he had spent his lifetime perfecting: baklava baking.
Island Girl
When a man stopped me on the street on the Upper East Side and remarked on my "Island Girl" vibes, it sparked a curiosity in me—to understand the perception of island culture, and compare the one I grew up on, Bahrain, to the one I now called home, Manhattan.
Love in the Time of Minder
An exploration of Muslim American women finding love online.
Recognition:
- Home is...? Public Reading, Fellowship Event
- RaceAhead Feature, Fortune Magazine
- Writing about Asian & Muslim American Neighborhoods, AAWW Radio