Cerdan Stories

Writer Fatin Abbas was born in Sudan and moved to the US with her family when she was 8 years old. She earned a BA in English literature from the University of Cambridge, a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, CUNY. Her latest book, Ghost Season, was recently published by W.W. Norton and is available for purchase

In this episode, we talk with Banuta Rubess, whose family is from Latvia and who was born in Toronto. She is a theater artist and writer, and a theater instructor, who has been researching and writing about her father’s experience during WW2 in Latvia, feeling squeezed between the Nazis on one side and the Soviets on the other, perceiving that neither side were friends of Latvia.

We are so excited to be back with Season 2 of Cerdan Stories! In this first episode, we talk with Luisa Ortiz-Perez, a journalist and activist from Mexico City now living in California. Luisa cares deeply about the traumas experienced by journalists, especially women journalists from Latin America, and works in different ways to heal that pain. She co-founded the non-profit Vita-Ac

In this episode of Cerdan Stories, we meet immigration attorney Philippe Weisz, Director of Legal Services at HIAS-Pennsylvania and talk about how his personal family history connects to the work he does every day helping new immigrants receive legal status in the US. Thank you to Philippe for sharing your commitment to and knowledge of our complex immigration system with us, as

In this episode of Cerdan Stories, we hear again from Anouar RAHMANI, a young reader, writer and human rights defender. In last episode, we talked about his love of language and writing. Today we talk about how his commitment to rights, his own and those of others, have made it impossible for him to stay in Algeria. When asked for a song that is important to him, Anouar chose an

In this episode, we meet Anouar Rahmani, avid reader, writer and human rights defender, from Tipaza, Algeria, now living in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where he is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow in residence at the City of Asylum and Carnegie Mellon University. In this episode, we talk about Anouar's use of language, his writing, and how he thinks about people's responsibility to their

In this episode, we meet Khaled Mattawa, poet and translator, from Benghazi, Libya, now in Dearborn, Michigan. He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN Award for Literary Translation, and Griffin Poetry Prize, among others, teaches, and edits the Michigan Quarterly Review. Khaled is a kind of philosopher of living in exile, between here and there and back again. For a just

In this episode of Cerdan Stories, we meet Anna Badkhen, a prolific and compassionate writer of the experience of people around the globe. Herself from St. Petersburg, Russia, she left when she was 28 years old and is now living in Philadelphia, PA (USA). That said, she does not consider herself an exile and in this episode has interesting insights into the ideas of exile, migrat

In this episode, Cerdan Stories talks with Shafi Karimi and Sofiea Sakhi, two young journalists from Afghanistan now living in Paris. In this episode, we learn about their careers as journalists, the direct death threat that caused them to flee Afghanistan, and how they are trying to rebuild it all in France while still helping Afghanistan. Here is the YouTube link to the comple

In this episode, Cerdan Stories talks with Rosalyn D'Mello, Indian author, feminist, activist, now living in South Tyrol, Italy. Rosalyn talks about her life in India, her personal narrative (a love story, actually) that brought her to Italy, and her political understanding of the situation of women who migrate.