Rafeef Ziadah

Ziadah was born in Beirut, Lebanon to Palestinian refugee parents[1] and began writing at a young age.[2] She grew up in Tunisia.[1] She attended York University in Toronto.[2] In 2004, she gave her first public performance after she was motivated by her experience of racism to write a poem.[2]

In 2009 Ziadah released her first spoken word album, Hadeel.[3] Ziadah produced Hadeel with a grant from the Ontario Arts Council within their Word of Mouth program in 2008.[4] Ziadah has traveled to countries all over the world to perform and conduct poetry workshops.[3] In 2011, Ziadah performed with Palestinian-American poet, Remi Kanazi in London, UK as part of the tour for his book, Poetic Injustice.[5] In 2012, Ziadah was chosen to represent Palestine at the South Bank Center Poets Olympiad.[3] In the same year, she performed at the World Village Festival in Helsinki.[6] During the summer of 2014, Ziadah contributed an opinion piece for The Guardian regarding the attacks on Gaza and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.[7] On November 14, 2014 Ziadah performed at a benefit concert for Palestine with Palestinian Hip hop group, DAM-Palestine sponsored by Manchester Palestine Action.[8] Rafeef Ziadah is well known-for her poems "Shades of Anger" [9] and "We teach life, sir".[10] Ziadah's poem "We teach life, sir" became the inspiration for a photography show for display inside the Scottish Parliament.[11] The exhibit was titled, "We Teach Life: The Children of the Occupation." [11]