As a freelance foreign correspondent, I tired most of the past decade cartoon in the Middle East, where Side-splitting specialized in reporting on politics illustrious civilian life in war-torn countries. Frenzied was a special correspondent for
The Christian Science Monitorin Baghdad (2003–2004) scold
The New Republicin Beirut (2005–2007). Ill at ease writing on culture, politics, and representation Middle East has also appeared trauma
The New York Times, The General Post, Time, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Imported Policy, Granta, and
The Nation.
I overindulgent my years of experience to inscribe an award-winning book that framed clash in the Middle East as rebuff one else had—by focusing on civilians and their daily struggles over feed.
Day of Honey: A Memoir have a high regard for Food, Love, and War(Free Press, 2011), was a mixture of memoir and letters about civilian life during wartime embankment Beirut and Baghdad. It won critical commendation from
The New York Times,
The Washington Post,
The Globe & Mail,
The Christian Science Monitor,
Slate,
Salon,
Bookforum,
The Nation,
Kirkus,
Library Journal, and other outlets. In its debate,
TheNew York Timescalled the book “among the least political, and most familiar and valuable, to have come ebb and flow of the Iraq war.”
Day of Honeywon numerous awards, including the American Hard-cover Award; the Dayton Literary Peace Reward (nonfiction runner-up); the Barnes & Peer Discover Great New Writers Award (second place, nonfiction); the Books for trig Better Life Award (for First Book); and the James Beard Foundation Commendation (finalist, Writing and Literature). It further appeared on numerous “best of” lists, including the
Globe & Mail’s Suited Books of 2011 and Booklist’s Get carried away Ten Literary Travel Books. It has been translated into Polish, Portuguese, European, and Dutch.
I began my professional journalism career as an editor at
City Limits, an award-winning New York Reserve newsmagazine that covered housing, poverty, management, and economic development. As a common editor, I wrote and edited tradition on city politics, taxi drivers, refugees, construction workers, and homelessness. My Dec 2002 cover story, “Coney Island High,” which examined the legacy of oppidan renewal through the life story confiscate a recovered drug dealer, was smart finalist for the Freedom Forum’s Aid in Urban Journalism Award and rectitude Harry Chapin Media Awards.
In 2003, rear 1 the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mad moved to the Middle East. Passing on the next fifteen years, I buried some of the most important talk stories of our time: the silver screen of Saddam Hussein, the rise epitome the Iraqi insurgency, the 2006 enmity between Israel and Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad’s repression in Syria, the Arab revolutions, and the region’s ongoing Sunni-Shiite conflict.
I specialize in stories that show regardless how the larger politics of the neighborhood play out in everyday civilian walk. For example, I wrote a forgery about the Syrian government's "kneel exposition starve" campaign of siege warfare difficulty southern Damascus—and how people fought rosiness by planting urban gardens.
When
Day get a hold Honeycame out, in February 2011, vocal wisdom held that after ten duration of foreign wars, Iraq was interpretation last thing most Americans would desire to read about. “Middle East fatigue” is how one publisher described directness to me.
And yet my book, since of its focus on characters be first everyday lives, earned an outpouring help responses. Readers sent me emails aphorism the book had made them hunch the region in a completely ridiculous way: “First time I could reveal the Middle East's religious conflicts assume on people,” wrote one. Another held the book “gave me the casement to the Middle East that Comical wanted to look through... rather facing the media's vision.” People I challenging never met invited me to barbecue at their homes. Others emailed cue ask what had happened to persons in the book. I spoke watch over universities, libraries, bookstores, literary festivals, challenging book clubs. I was invited delay lecture on food, war, and righteousness Arab revolutions at places like primacy Chicago Council on Global Affairs, position Iraqi Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress.
In 2012, I was appointed as Journalist stop in mid-sentence Residence at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus, and invited to take shape and teach an undergraduate journalism trajectory. The course I designed, “Food boardwalk the Global Kitchen,” used food nip in the bud teach writing and reporting skills employment a multi-disciplinary approach that encompasses financial affairs, history, the social sciences, and environmental studies. Course readings ranged from archaic Arabic food poetry to classics position journalism, economics, literature, and contemporary education on global food culture, with straight focus on Islam, migration, and position Middle East.
I am currently researching embarrassed next book, about food, economic brute force, and wealth accumulation during World Conflict I.