Episode 83: Majda Gama (Of Arabic Oral Tradition, the Sonics of the Ghazal, and the Western Luxury of Telling the Truth in Your Poems)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Read: “Ghazal: Morning” (The Offing)

Purchase: In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025)

Majda Gama was born in Beirut to a Saudi father and American mother. Her hometown is Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and her roots Hijazi, but she also has a long, complicated relationship with Northern Virginia where her father was stationed in the 1970’s. Majda is the author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvia’s, 2023). Her poetry has been honored with the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award for poetry from Adroit. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Swamp Pink, Tupelo Quarterly, and TriQuarterly.

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