On this page, you’ll find information about the published works of Elmaz Abinader, including her most recent release: This House, My Bones (Aquarius Press/Willow Books/AUXmedia, 2014) her forthcoming work, ALMOST A LIFE  (Working title) and her featured media publications. Recently named,  finalist for the Louise Bogan Award for Excellence in Poetry, Trio Press May 2025

Sample

POETRY

Trying to Keep Hopes Low, Red Door Magazine, November 2024 (poem on Beirut blast)

Leaving Beirut #1 and Leaving Beirut #3 Taos Journal of Poetry, Summer 2024 (escaping war)

Leaving Beirut 5, Stonecoast Review #21, Summer 2024

Footwork, Panorama Travel, Fall 2023 (poem on the stories feet tell)

PROSE

Life Partners in Writing: How Two Women of Color Found their Writing Spouses, with Faith Adiele About Place Journal

The Imaginary of Renewal, Part 2, Humans and Nature, essay(An exciting garden project with farmers & art)

The Imaginary Of Renewal, A Garden Project In France, Part 1, With Anne Brochot, Humans And Nature, August 2024

Standing Still, Terrain.org 14th Annual Contest in Nonfiction Finalist, February 14, 2024(award winning hybrid essay/poem on profiling)

Facing Down the Language Barrier, Panorama Travel, Summer 2023, (essay on traveling while Arab, not speaking Arabic

An Instrument of Remembering: A Review of Sholeh Wolpé’s “Abacus of Loss”, PRISM INTERNATIONAL, August 4, 2022

Southwest Asian and North African Artists and Their Barrier to Access, Hyperallergic, August 26, 2021

The Rites of Passage to a Small Literary Revolution(Unfinished), Mizna, Winter 2019

Living in the Square, Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color, ed by Shizue Seigel, Spring 2021

The Water Bearers, Minding Nature, ed by Center for Humans and Nature Fall 2021

Breaking the Addiction to Hate, International Policy Digest, August 8, 2019

The Water Bearers, Center for Humans and Nature, November 2016

A Question Of Faith – With A Lower Case ‘F’, Al-Jazeera English, December 29, 2015

When Is A Mass Shooting More Than A Mass Shooting?, Al-Jazeera English, December 4, 2015

Race in the US: Reflections of an Arab-American,  Al-Jazeera English, August 27, 2015

FICTION

Hanging Fire, Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2022 (story of woman returning to Jordan)

Queen of Spades, Nimrod International Journal, Spring 2018 (Returning to Lebanon after Civil War)

Fourth of July, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Spring 2018 (Adjusting to the US)

Writing Journey

I have several current projects, Almost a Life, a novel…you can read about it on the Almost the Life page & hear about it here.

My Poetry collection, Life Cycles of the Lost follows the arc of displacement—from the moment of leaving to the complex work of arriving, settling, and remembering. These poems bear witness to the Lebanese civil war, the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and the universal refugee experience, while exploring what it means to build a life from fragments of memory and hope.

Almost a Life continues the discussions my writing is having. What happens when we don’t get to determine who we are and how we live? Particularly as women. In a recently published short story, Queen of Spades (Nimrod International Journal), Linah literally ran away from home when she got married and while she was gone, her family was torn apart by a Civil War. What she discovers is frightening and what many women discover in their disorientation is the need to understand and adapt.

My first book, a memoir, The Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon was the story of three generations of Lebanese and their various challenges in finding a home away from their country. Based on diaries, interviews, and letters, the book covers two centuries, ending in 1947.

My second publication, a poetry collection, In the Country of My Dreams…. Provides a collection of very specific dislocations—not only the family immigration but my own transition from New York to the Midwest and the shock of the open terrain of Nebraska and the intimate relationships with natural elements. It won the Oakland/PEN Award for Poetry.

In addition to these publications, I have written and performed several one-woman plays: Country of Origin, Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, Voices from the Siege and The Torture Quartet. Each uncovers a personal perspective on the lives of Arabs in the middle of political trauma. For instance, 32 Mohammeds is an intersection with the death of Mohammed al-Durra, a boy killed in Palestine before the second Intifada; Ramadan Moon explores the mythology associated with women who are veiled and the different reasons and responses to the veil.

My poetry collection, This House, My Bones draws parallels between the changes of the earth through natural means to the changes in our bodies during unnatural traumas and how that trauma moves through generations. (Willow Press, October 2014). It was the editor’s selection for that series.