{"id":13608,"date":"2015-09-01T07:55:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13608"},"modified":"2015-08-31T07:28:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T11:28:06","slug":"the-pen-ten-with-dunya-mikhail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/the-pen-ten-with-dunya-mikhail\/","title":{"rendered":"The PEN Ten with Dunya Mikhail"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"clearfix\">\n<p class=\"title\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">A pleasure to see this interview with Dunya Mikhail on the PEN site. Below the opening sparagraphs; tou can read the whole interview <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pen.org\/interview\/pen-ten-dunya-mikhail\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"node-meta metadata clearfix\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul class=\"inner clearfix\">\n<li class=\"submitted\">By: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pen.org\/randa-jarrar\">Randa Jarrar<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"created\">PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 25, 2015<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"articleBody\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<div class=\"introduction-text\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"content-image-div\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.pen.org\/sites\/default\/files\/dunya_mikhail_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"photo_credit\">Photo of Dunya Mikhail by Cary Loren<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p><em>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pen.org\/topic\/pen-ten\">PEN Ten<\/a> is PEN America&#8217;s weekly interview series. This week, guest editor Randa Jarrar speaks to Dunya Mikhail.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Mikhail came to the United States in the mid-1990s. She is the author of <em>The Iraqi Nights<\/em>, <em>Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea<\/em>, and <em>The War Works Hard<\/em>. Her honors include a Kresge fellowship (2013), the Arab American Book Award (2010), and the UN Human Rights Award (2001). She was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. She currently teaches Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>During my teenage years in Baghdad, I wrote poems as gifts for my friends\u2019 birthdays. They called me \u201cthe poet.\u201d At home, my mother used to mention to our guests that I was busy writing \u201cfeelings\u201d as an excuse for me being in my room and not with them. She called the poems \u201cfeelings\u201d because in Arabic the two words are close; we call poetry \u201cshi\u2019r\u201d and feeling \u201cshi\u2019ur\u201d and she made her own plural of both words. But my identity as a writer can be traced to a particular time: September 1980. That month, the Iraq\u2013Iran War was announced. All men who could bear arms were called to the battlefield (jabha). \u201cAre they taking women too?\u201d I asked. No, I learned. The reason I asked with concern was that I really wanted to continue my poetry discoveries and be left alone with my writing and not be taken away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ctd\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pen.org\/interview\/pen-ten-dunya-mikhail\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A pleasure to see this interview with Dunya Mikhail on the PEN site. Below the opening sparagraphs; tou can read the whole interview here. By: Randa Jarrar PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 25, 2015 Photo of&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,56,91,1],"tags":[1764],"class_list":["post-13608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-interview","category-poetry","category-uncategorized","tag-dunya-mikhail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13610,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13608\/revisions\/13610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}