Gabrielle David, Executive Producer and Co-Host, is a poet, writer, photographer, artist and musician. She has worked as a desktop publisher and word processing specialist for the past twenty years, both at Fortune 500 firms in the NY/NJ area, and through her former company, Chimeara Communications, Inc. She was a partner of hotshots unlimited photography, a photo studio specializing in portraiture, fashion photography, publicity photos and special events, which led to a successful photography exhibit sponsored and held at the Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center in 1986. Gabrielle has published several essays on multicultural literature and published the poetry collections: this is me, a collection of poems & things (CCI Books, 1994); and spring has returned & i am renewed (CCI Books, 1995). Her work was published in Paterson Literary Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, AIM Magazine, and phati’tude Literary Magazine. She has appeared at numerous venues, including St. Mark’s Church, Oded Halahmy Foundation for the Arts, Barnes & Noble (Edgewater, NJ), Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Fordham University and Rutgers University. As editor of phati’tude Literary Magazine, Gabrielle has produced and/or performed in numerous “phati’tude” readings and has served as literature coordinator for Langston Hughes Community Library’s successful literature series, “New American Writers of The 90’s.” She is currently Executive Director of the Intercultural Alliance of Artists & Scholars, Inc.
Ammiel Alcalay, Executive Producer and Co-Host, is a poet, prose stylist, scholar, critic, translator, and political activist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from what was once Yugoslavia. His work often examines how poetry and politics affect the way we see ourselves and the way Americans think about the Middle East. The former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College; Ammiel is on the faculties in American Studies, Comparative Literature, English, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has taught Sephardic Literature (both Hebrew and in-translation), and a variety of courses on Middle Eastern, Mediterranean Cultures (Hebrew and Jewish literature of the Middle East, in its Islamic, Levantine Arabic, and Israeli contexts), intellectual history and its contemporary and modern reception. He also teaches 20th century American poetry and poetics, theories of translation and the social and political roles of writing and culture. In addition to teaching, Ammiel edits and publishes translations of Bosnian, Hebrew, Arabic and Spanish, as well as articles and his own prose and poetry. He has also published his own books of poetry, fiction and essay collections, as well as published articles in newspapers like The New York Times and the Village Voice.
Nathalie Handal, Executive Producer and Co-Host (2002-2004), is a highly regarded Palestinian poet, writer and playwright of the Diaspora and a well-known cultural and literary activist. Named one of the ten Arab writers of note by the San Francisco Chronicle, she has lived in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East. She finished her postgraduate studies in English and Drama at University of London, her MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College, and her MA and BA at Simmons College. Nathalie has read/performed, lectured and taught theatre and creative writing workshops worldwide, namely at La Sorbonne, University of London, McGill University, City University of New York, Yarmouk University, University of Jordan, Lewis and Clark, Arvon Foundation, UK and at numerous other universities, festivals and conferences. She was one of the Chairs at the Pushkin Club, London (Russian Literary Center) and the Program Director of Summer Literary Seminars in the Dominican Republic. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines/literary reviews, has been translated into various languages (French, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Malayan). Her poetry book collections include: The NeverField (Post-Apollo Press, 1999); Traveling Rooms (ASC Records, UK 1999), a CD of her poetry and accompanied by improvisational music by Russian musicians; and The Lives of Rain (Interlink, 2005). Handal is the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets bestseller and winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Handal teaches at Columbia University.
