Banah Ghadbian (they/them) is originally from Syria and was raised in the U.S. south. Banah attended Spelman College where they graduated as Valedictorian with degrees in Comparative Women’s Studies and Sociology. While at Spelman, Banah was a part of the Toni Cade Bambara Scholar-Activist-Writer’s Collective, the Social Justice Fellows Program, the Women Against Violence Brigade, and cofounded the Students for Justice in Palestine.
Banah has worked all around the world with refugee youth including in refugee camps in Greece and as a teacher at the Syrian Women’s Association in Amman, Jordan. Banah co-founded an arts-based healing center for Syrian refugee youth called Arab Youth Collective (now the Majdal Center) in El Cajon, California. They have an MA in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. Recently Banah won the Diverse Voices Prize in 2021 for their first poetry book, La Syrena, forthcoming publication August 23, 2022. Banah’s creative writing can be found in The Women’s Review of Books, Poetry Northwest, Her Words by Black Mountain Press, The Feminist Wire, and other sites. Banah holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies and their dissertation is about the creative work Syrian women conjure in revolution and war.
Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
M.A.. Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
B.A., Sociology and Comparative Women's Studies, Spelman College