Mission

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.

Named City Page’s Nonprofit of the Year in 2020 and a Regional Cultural Treasure in 2021, we publish Mizna, an award-winning SWANA lit and art journal; produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offer classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.

Vision

Mizna seeks to be a local, national, and international leader in providing excellent artistic platforms for emerging and established SWANA artists, connecting their work to engaged and thoughtful audiences.

Through Mizna, audiences have the opportunity to engage in the work of Arab and Muslim artists on its own terms. And our community has a critical opportunity to see some facet of their own experience reflected on the page or the screen.

Values

  • SWANA artists doing work on their own terms
  • The complexity of the SWANA community
  • Problematizing the limiting and imperfect term “Arab”
  • Confronting biases, understanding that we can be blind to our own biases
  • Standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement
  • Working toward a liberated Palestine and complying with the BDS movement
  • Supporting communities struggling for freedom
  • Standing in solidarity with indigenous, black & brown, LGBTQIA+, and all marginalized communities
  • Believing in the value of our work and seeking equity

History

  • Grassroots

    Mizna was co-founded as a grassroots organization by Kathryn Haddad and Saleh Abudayyeh who identified a need for an artistic space dedicated to Arab and Muslim writers to narrate their own stories and make work on their own terms. Along with a small group of other Arab and Muslim writers, artists, and scholars, Kathy and Saleh established Mizna during vibrant time in the ‘90s when Asian and black Twin Cities artists and activists were creating collectives and working together to imagine a more socially just and representative arts scene.

  • The Journal

    In 1999, the first issue of the art + lit journal Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America was published. It was a novel idea then, and continues to be so today as, remarkably, Mizna is still the only lit journal of its kind. In 2003, Mizna launched the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival to bring to Minnesota current, indie film from Arab artists in the SWANA region and its diaspora. The Arab Film Fest is the largest and longest running such festival in the Midwest, presenting juried prizes and audience awards and inviting filmmakers to engage with audiences.

    In addition to these flagship programs, Mizna has presented other contemporary cultural programming, producing theatrical and music performances, creating and commissioning public art experiences, offering classes and workshops, and supporting an active writing group and book club.

  • Growth

    We are well rooted in our Twin Cities home, and have also worked to create a national and international presence by participating in conferences and national gatherings, touring our film fest, presenting national readings, and distributing our journal to subscribers and libraries. Mizna has received a Pushcart Prize, an Utne Independent Press Award, Pangea World Theater’s Award for Art + Social Justice, the Ordway’s Sally Award, and multiple Knight Arts Challenge Awards.

    Over our two decades, we have supported the work of over 400 artists and well over 10,000 audience members and readers. We value the filmmakers, writers, and artists in our community and strive to be supportive of their work to create, grapple, disrupt, and explore.

  • The Mizna Impact

    We value our partnerships with local and national organizations whom we work with to present impactful experiences and broaden our reach. In these partnerships, equity is a critical value that we work hard to foster, realizing that our work has value and that representation, cultural knowledge, and solidarity with black and brown communities are incredibly important aspects of our work.

    Truly free artistic spaces like Mizna are not simply helpful to the community or a luxury that we are fortunate to have. Rather, they are a necessity. At this political moment when our communities are especially vulnerable to government policies and hateful forces, our work is more important than ever. As one Mizna author, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha put it, Mizna shares “life-saving stories.”

Staff

Ahmed AbdulMageed

Film Programming Coordinator

Ahmed AbdulMageed is an Egyptian-Palestinian aspiring film & media scholar. He graduated from St. Olaf College in 2020 with a … Continue reading “Ahmed AbdulMageed”

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George Abraham

Executive Editor

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award … Continue reading “George Abraham”

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Lamia Abukhadra

Art and Communications Director

Lamia Abukhadra is the Art and Communications Director at Mizna, where she works to put filmmakers, writers, artists, and thinkers … Continue reading “Lamia Abukhadra”

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Heba Y. Amin

Curator of Visual Arts

Egyptian artist and scholar Heba Y. Amin currently teaches at Bard College Berlin, is a doctorate fellow in art history … Continue reading “Heba Y. Amin”

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Lana Barkawi

Executive + Artistic Director

Lana Barkawi, Ph.D., is an experienced executive and artistic director, publisher, fundraiser, curator, and leader in the field of Arab … Continue reading “Lana Barkawi”

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Michelle Baroody

Film Programming Curator

Michelle Baroody holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota. Her research and teaching interests include archival … Continue reading “Michelle Baroody”

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Nour Eldin Hussein

Intern

Nour Eldin Hussein is an Egyptian essayist, poet, researcher, translator, and enthusiast of the written and spoken word. He lives, … Continue reading “Nour Eldin Hussein”

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Elina Katrin

Community Engagement Coordinator

Elina Katrin is the author of the poetry chapbook, If My House Has a Voice (Newfound, 2023). A Syrian-Russian immigrant, … Continue reading “Elina Katrin”

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Aram Kavoossi

Literary Programs Coordinator + Assistant Editor

Aram Kavoossi is an artist, writer, and editor based in Minneapolis.

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Ellina Kevorkian

Deputy Director

Ellina Kevorkian is an Armenian American artist, curator, residency director, and arts administrator whose 20-year career advocating for art and artists. … Continue reading “Ellina Kevorkian”

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Dunia Khouri

Arabic Instructor

Dunia Khouri is a native Arabic speaker from Lebanon. She has lived in in Minneapolis, Minnesota for 19 years and … Continue reading “Dunia Khouri”

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Board of Directors

    • Bilal Alkatout, Treasurer
    • Stephanie Haddad, Vice-Chair
    • Nahid Khan, Secretary
    • Dipankar Mukherjee
    • Rabi’h Nahas, Chair
    • Sagirah Shahid
    • Jna Shelomith

Past board members

W.A.G.E. Certification is a national program initiated and operated by W.A.G.E. that publicly recognizes those nonprofit arts organizations demonstrating a history of, and commitment to, voluntarily paying artist fees that meet our minimum payment standards.

Contact Us




    Mizna
    2446 University Ave W., Suite 115
    St. Paul, MN 55114, USA
    (612) 788-6920
    mizna@mizna.org
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