Hala Alyan with Olivia Issa

A Palestinian American writer, clinical psychologist, and author of Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, as well as four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Guernica, and elsewhere. Her second novel, The Arsonists’ City, was published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in March of this year. She lives in Brooklyn with her Husband.

The Co-Executive Director of No Lost Generation GWU, a student-led refugee-advocacy group on GWU’s campus, and the Co-Chair of the Student Voices for Refugees Steering Committee. For the past six years, Olivia has been engaged with refugee-advocacy and resettlement work in Chicago and Washington D.C., volunteering and interning with resettlement agencies and refugee aid providers throughout both cities. Additionally, Olivia works to promote pride in Arab heritage by organizing events as Director of Outreach for her school’s Arab Student Association and engaging the Lebanese diaspora community across Washington D.C.