MEMBERS
Omar Abed
Omar Abed is a Palestinian-American author and software engineer who thinks in rhyme. When tasked long ago to “write without rhyming,” he couldn’t quite figure it out, so he wrote The Book That Almost Rhymed instead, which became his debut picture book with a major publisher. Omar lives with his family in Northern Virginia, where he enjoys watching movi…
Inda Ahmad Zahri
Inda Ahmad Zahri writes and illustrates stories that are often imbued with her fervent wish for a kinder world. Originally from Kuala Lumpur, she now splits her time between her garden home in Meanjin/Brisbane and a sandy spot in the Middle East.
E. G. Alaraj
E.G. Alaraj grew up in the magical place that every child knows, where ideas look like pictures drawn from crayons, paint or ink and sound like stories from long ago and far away. The youngest of six girls in a homeschool family, she spent her childhood with her nose in storybooks, art books, music books, notebooks and trouble—especially trouble. In fac…
Huda Al Marashi
Huda Al-Marashi writes for both children and adults. She is the author of the middle grade novel Hail Mariam and a co-author of the Walter Dean Myers Honors award-winning novel Grounded. Her memoir First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story
Hatem Aly
Hatem Aly is an Egyptian-born illustrator who has illustrated many books for young people that earned multiple starred reviews and positions on the New York Times bestseller list including The Proudest Blue with Ibtihaj Muhammad and S. K. Ali, In My Mosque
Susannah Aziz
Susannah Aziz is a former teacher, freelance writer, and third-generation Palestinian-American Muslim. Through reading to her own children, Aziz felt humor was missing in the majority of traditional Islamic children's literature. So she picked up a pen one day. And she wrote. Fun, silly stories. Susannah aims to depict the lives of average Muslim childr…
Leila Boukarim
Leila Boukarim writes stories for children that inspire empathy and encourage meaningful discussions. She enjoys reading (multiple books at a time), embroidering, nature walking, and spending time with people, listening to their stories and sharing her own. Leila lives in Berlin, Germany.
Reem Faruqi
Reem Faruqi is the award-winning author of Unsettled, Golden Girl, Anisa’s International Day, Call Me Adnan, Swimming Toward a Dream, Do You Even Know Me?, The House Without Lights, and Zarina Divided. She is also the author of the ALA Notable picture books
Aya Khalil
Aya Khalil (she/her), M.Ed, is an award-winning author, librarian and freelance journalist. She holds a master’s degree in Education with a focus in teaching English as a second Language. Aya and her books have been featured in Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Yahoo!, Book Riot and USA Today. Her writing has been published in The Huffington Pos…
Hannah Moushabeck
Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author and book worker who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers and learned the power of literature at a young age. Hannah has worked in publishing for over a decade at companies such as Chronicle Books, The Quarto Group, and Simon & Schuster. She now runs Interlink Publishing…
Susan Muaddi Darraj
Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection,
Maysa Odeh
Maysa Odeh is a Palestinian writer who grew up between Amman, Jordan and the United States. Her debut picture book was written during the assault on Gaza in 2021, which sparked a conversation between herself and her inner child. A Map for Falasteen answers the questions she was too shy to ask as a child of Palestinian refugees. What is a homeland? Where…
Razeena Omar Gutta
Razeena Omar Gutta has been writing for children and sharing her love for diverse books on various blogs for over ten years. She is the author of Hana’s Hundreds of Hijabs. Razeena is a South Asian Muslim born in Zimbabwe and now living in Australia, where her three book-loving children inspire her to highlight Muslim lives in the joyful stories she wri…
Nadine Presley
Nadine Presley is a Syrian Canadian author who loves everything about Ramadan. Her earliest memories of Ramadan go back to her days in Damascus, where she joyfully awaited the month to begin. She now resides in Canada with her husband and three boys, working as a literacy educator. Passionate about anti-racism work and promoting pride in Arab Muslim her…
Rahma Rodaah
Rahma Rodaah was born and raised in Hargeisa, Somaliland. At the age of eight, her family immigrated to Canada where she still resides today. She is a mother of four children and enjoys reading and coming up with silly bedtime stories. She is also the author of two self-published picture books and firmly believes that children need to be able to identif…
Rhonda Roumani
Rhonda Roumani is a Syrian-American journalist who has written about Islam, the Arab world and Muslim-American issues for more than two decades. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Religion News Service (RNS), the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, Religion News Service, USA Today, Salon, and others.
Julie Rowan-Zoch
Julie Rowan-Zoch is the illustrator of Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening by Richard T. Morris, Debug This Book by Omar Abed, Not All Sheep Are Boring! by Bobby Moynihan, and Louis by Tom Lichtenheld, and is the author-illustrator of I’m a Hare, So There!.
Gayatri Sethi
Gayatri Sethi is a cultural worker, educator and caregiver. She is connected to multiple diaspora communities in (South) Asia, Africa and the Americas. With heritage roots in pre-partition Punjab, she was born in Shinyanga, Tanzania and raised in Gaborone, Botswana. She identifies as polycultural, multilingual and interfaith.
Safa Suleiman
Safa Suleiman is a Palestinian American educator with more than twenty years of experience in undergraduate and elementary school pedagogy. She is the author of Hilwa’s Gifts (‘25, Candlewick), which received a starred review from Booklist, calling it “an absolute treasure.” Her forthcoming picture book,
M.O. Yuksel
M. O. Yuksel is the award-winning author of In My Mosque, One Wish: Fatima al-Fihri and the World’s Oldest University, and Ramadan Kareem. Of Uzbek heritage, she was born in Türkiye and immigrated to the United States when she was seven. She spent most of her childhood in New York City. Ramadan is her favorite time of year.