Zeina Azzam

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-2025 and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her full-length poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You, was published in 2023 and her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, in 2021. Her poems are also published in literary journals, webzines, and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Vox Populi, Mizna, Sukoon, Rusted Radishes, Split This Rock, Cutleaf Journal, Bettering American Poetry, Writing the Land: Virginia, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IX: Virginia, Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, and Gaza Unsilenced. Her poem, “You Birth the Seeds,” was set as a choral piece by renowned composer Melissa Dunphy.

Azzam has worked in the fields of education and Middle East affairs for her entire professional career, including as executive director of The Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center and as director of outreach at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She serves as a mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a writing program for youth in Gaza, and volunteers for Grassroots Alexandria, advocating locally for the civil rights of vulnerable communities. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University, an M.A. in sociology from George Mason University, and a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College.