The Queer Arabs Alia, Ellie, Ahmed, Nadia and Adam

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 growing up in Western Sydney, breaking into the journalism field in Australia and England, and the assumptions he encountered while writing for both Arab and LGBTQ centered publications. He also discussed the process of putting this memoir together, the particular care involved in editing personal work, the quandaries involved in…

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 working class roots, and the inclusion of queer voices. We also discuss the historical context of American intervention in Iran and previous protest movements, often absent from Western coverage. We discuss the hesitancy of international leftists in speaking out–whether due to oversimplified ideas of anti-interventionism or concerns of promoting…

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 has books and pickles.  Cats being walked in clear backpacks were discussed. We took a break, sat on a large rock in a park, and recorded this mini-episode!  Hear all about Avocado Toast’s, Bella Hadid’s, and Cher from Clueless’…

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.  The puppet/public art project Walk With Amal, which was heartwarming, but also brought up complicated feelings about the need for art to create empathy towards refugees. The documentary Sirens about the Lebanese all women thrash metal band Slave to Sirens, which was both beautiful in…

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 talks about the work he has done with others to help them along their healing journeys, the ways he has contributed in the collective aim for queer liberation, and more. You can follow Ahmed on Instagram @TheHealingKhan, and check out his…

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-future Kuwait City (based on his short story “The Runner”).  Barrak discusses how he aims to move away from the Eurocentric “single author” model of creating art, including the GCC artist collective, which creates group work around the aesthetics of their upbringings in the gulf, and holding physically-based…