Lynn Gaspard is the publisher of Middle-East specialist press Saqi Books. Shortlisted for the Independent Publishers Guild Young Publisher of the Year Award in 2013, Gaspard is a trustee of the Shubbak Festival and sits on the English PEN Writers in Translation Committee.

Carol Ann Duffy DBE is a Scottish poet and playwright. She was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009 for a fixed ten-year term. Among her most notable collections of poetry are Standing Female Nude, winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time, which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture, winner of the TS Eliot Prize.

Negin Farsad is an Iranian-American comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker based in New York. She was named one of the 53 Funniest Women by the Huffington Post, one of '10 Feminist Comedians to Watch' by Paper magazine, and was selected as a TED Fellow for her work in social justice comedy. She is host of the Fake the Nation podcast and has written for/appeared on Comedy Central, MTV, PBS, IFC, Nickelodeon among others. She is director/producer of the feature films The Muslims Are Coming! starring Jon Stewart, David Cross and Lewis Black (available on Netflix) and 3rd Street Blackout starring Janeane Garofalo and Ed Weeks.

Jennifer Jajeh is a Palestinian-American actress, writer and comedian whose work lies at the intersection of global politics, identity and pop culture. Her critically acclaimed one woman show I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I'm Afraid to Tell You toured for five years across the US and internationally. Directed by W. Kamau Bell, the show was dubbed 'a fantastic and important piece of theatre' at the Edinburgh Fringe where it received a slew of 5 star reviews. Jajeh can currently be seen on stages across Los Angeles honing her unique brand of political comedy and storytelling. She will make her television debut on the Emmy award-winning show Transparent in autumn 2017.

Sayed Kashua is the author of the novels Dancing Arabs, Let It Be Morning, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Exposure, winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, and the autobiographical collection, Native. He is a columnist for Haaretz and the creator of the popular, prize-winning sitcom Arab Labor. Kashua has received numerous awards for his journalism including the Lessing Prize for Critic (Germany) and the SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award (USA). Now living in the United States with his family, he teaches at the University of Illinois.

Arwa Mahdawi is a British-Palestinian writer based in New York. Arwa started her working life as a corporate lawyer but after getting stuck on a seventeen-year-old case about ice-cream she had a minor meltdown and switched to advertising. Having acquired a Green Card (through entirely legitimate means), Arwa promptly quit advertising for the lucrative field of freelance journalism and is now a frequent contributor to the Guardian.

Eli Valley is a writer and artist whose work has been featured in The New Republic, The Nation, The Nib, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, Gawker, Current Affairs and elsewhere. His art has been labelled 'ferociously repugnant' by Commentary and 'hilarious' by The Comics Journal. The 2011-2013 Artist in Residence at the Forward newspaper, he has given multimedia performances fusing comics with personal narrative in the United States, Europe, Africa and Israel. His first comics collection Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel was published in 2017.

Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called 'An emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery' by New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi's migrant labour camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including the New York Times, Paris Review and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Aisha Mirza is a writer, artist and counsellor from East London, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She studies the impact of microaggressions on the psyche of queer black and brown people, and is interested in body hair, madness and race. Aisha's written work has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Black Girl Dangerous, Media Diversified and openDemocracy, and she was one of the contributors to the anthology, The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, published in 2017. She has shown art in London and New York.

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelist. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for The Blue Fox (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and From the Mouth of the Whale was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His latest novel Moonstone - The Boy Who Never Was was awarded the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize. Also a poet, librettist and lyricist, Sjón has written nine poetry collections, four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer in the Dark. Sjón's novels have been published in thirty-five languages.

Hassan Abdulrazzak is a British Iraqi playwright living in London. His previous plays include Baghdad Wedding, The Prophet and Love, Bombs and Apples. His new play And Here I Am will be part of the Shubbak Festival 2017 and will then tour the UK. His essays, short stories, translations and poems have appeared in the Guardian, Edinburgh Review, Banipal and Snakeskin. He is the recipient of George Devine, Meyer-Whitworth and Pearson theatre awards as well as the Arab British Centre Award for Culture.

Leila Aboulela was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She is the author of four novels, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her collection of short stories Coloured Lights was shortlisted for the MacMillan Silver PEN Award. Leila's work has been translated into 14 languages, broadcast on BBC Radio and appeared in publications such as Granta, Freeman's and the Guardian. Leila grew up in Sudan and moved to Scotland in her mid-twenties.

Shadi Alzaqzouq is an award-winning Palestinian artist whose works have been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. In his series Muslim Punk, Al-Zaqzouq combines universally-recognised though traditionally contrary punk and Muslim characteristics to create one being. In this way, the being disturbs the establishment while also highlighting the freedom of each individual and their religion. Currently residing in Paris where he graduated in Fine Art from Paris 8 University, Al-Zaqzouq was invited by the renowned street-artist Banksy to participate in his show Dismaland in 2015. He won the Qattan Foundation Young Palestinian Artist Award in 2007.

Chant Avedissian was born in Cairo. He studied fine arts in Montreal (1970-73) and print-making at the Ecole National Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (1974-76). He returned to Cairo in 1980 and worked with Hassan Fathy from 1981-89. His work is part of the public collection at the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), the National Museum of Scotland and the National Gallery of Jordan. He lives in Cairo.

Born in Damascus, Tammam Azzam currently lives in Germany. Originally trained in Fine Art, Azzam turned to digital media and graphic art following the outbreak of violence in Syria to create visual composites of the conflict that would resonate with an international audience. In 2013, Azzam made headlines worldwide when his Freedom Graffiti print went viral. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and institutions worldwide including City Museum of Odenburg in Germany, For-Site Foundation in San Francisco, Banksy's Dismaland in Weston-super-Mare, Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, De Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam, Rush Arts in New York, Abu Dhabi Festival and Ayyam Gallery in London and Dubai.

Bidisha is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in social justice, international affairs, gender and the arts. In 2013 she was an International Reporting Project Fellow, raising awareness of global health and development issues. She also does outreach work in UK prisons, detention centres and refugees' resource centres. This inspired her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015). Bidisha was the regular presenter of BBC Radio 3's flagship arts programme Night Waves and the World Service arts show The Strand, as well as guest presenting Radio 4's Saturday Review and Woman's Hour, for which she is also a regular contributor. She is a Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation and is also a published poet.

Chaza Charafeddine is a Lebanese artist, photographer and writer. Her 'Divine Comedy' series mixes her photographic portraits of men with 1940s Iranian, Indian, Afghani and Egyptian popular portrayals of mythological beings or with Mughal Islamic art from Persian and Turkish miniatures of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Charafeddine's work has been exhibited worldwide including at the Institut du Monde Arabe in France, Högkvarteret Gallery in Stockholm and Green Art Gallery in Dubai; and her performances have been shown in contemporary art venues in Lebanon and Europe. Chaza Charafeddine is represented by Agial Art Gallery / Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut.

Moris Farhi MBE is an Anglo-Turkish author. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Vice-President of International Pen. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and after a brief acting career turned to...

Muslim Panik by Shadi Alzaqzouq
A Personal Guide to Extreme Vetting by Arwa Mahdawi
Are You Talkin' to Me? By Chant Avedissian
The Joys of Applying for a US Visa by Karl Sharro
Colour Abdullah! by James Nunn
My Own People Don't Like Me Very Much by Negin Farsad
50 States of America First by Bidisha
La La Land by Chris Riddell
Trump and Gaddafi by Hazem Saghieh
Trumpination by Molly Crabapple
UK Researchers: Islam Is Not Spiritual But It Is a Useful Identity by Omar Hamdi
A Sidon-Gateshead Upbringing (in Essex) by Esther Manito
'Kesh Angels by Hassan Hajjaj
Do I Understand That You Are a Homosexual, Sir? by Saleem Haddad
Sexy Souk by Rana Salam
How Islam Taught Me to Be a Drag Queen by Amrou al-Kadhi
Divine Comedy by Chaza Charafeddine
Majed by Leila Aboulela
White Like Me by Jennifer Jajeh
Tuesday's Child by Hassan Abdulrazzak
Are Nazi Anthologies Kosher Today? By Eli Valley
Of Dolphin Children and Leviathans by Moris Farhi
From Syria, with Love by Tammam Azzam
Shade-ism by Alex Wheatle
Comprehensive by Carol Ann-Duffy
Yesterday I Stepped on a White Woman's Yoga Mat by Aisha Mirza
Disposable Bodies by Laila Shawa
The Joke's on Them by Joumana Haddad
Cola by Mazen Kerbaj
Postcards from a Muslim Mermaid by Sabrina Mahfouz
Preparing My Kids for the New America Sayed Kashua
Fabulous Creatures by Alberto Manguel
There Are People: Cairo 2012 by Bahia Shehab
The Muslim: a Cautionary Tale by Sjon
Afterword
About the Contributors