About

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, SWANA, 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. Kathy Haddad went on to lead Mizna as its first executive director from 1999 to 2009.

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.”