Suheir Hammad

Suheir Hammad is a Palestinian-American poet, author, political activist, and Broadway performer, born on October 25, 1973, in Amman, Jordan. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who had lived in Lydda before the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, subsequently enduring displacement through the Gaza Strip and Jordan before emigrating to Brooklyn, New York City with Hammad when she was five years old. The family later relocated to Staten Island.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Hammad was shaped by two distinct but complementary forces: the hip-hop culture thriving in the borough and the oral histories passed down by her parents and grandparents about life before and after their displacement from Lydda. Those influences converged in her writing, which addresses themes of dispossession, immigration, Palestinian identity, Muslim identity, gender, and the experience of being a poet navigating all of those intersecting realities.

Her poem "First Writing Since," a response to the September 11 attacks, brought her to the attention of hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, who signed her to HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She subsequently toured with the production for two years. In 2002, Hammad appeared on Broadway as an original cast member and writer for Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, and the production received a Tony Award in the category of Special Theatrical Event in 2003. She also served as a talent associate for the Peabody Award-winning HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry in 2003.

Hammad's work in theater includes the produced plays Blood Trinity, presented at the New York Hip Hop Theater Festival in 2002; ReOrientalism in 2003, for which she wrote the libretto; and breaking letter(s), staged at New WORLD Theater in 2008. In 2011, she contributed to the Bush Theatre's Sixty Six Books project, writing a piece drawn from the Book of Haggai in the King James Bible.

In 2008, Hammad made her fiction film debut in the Palestinian film Salt of this Sea, directed by Annemarie Jacir, playing the role of Soraya. The film premiered as an official selection in the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Her additional screen credits include serving as narrator for Lest We Forget in 2003 and The Fourth World War in 2004, providing verses for When I Stretch Forth Mine Hand in 2009, appearing as a guest speaker in Things Fall Apart in 2010, and serving as writer and performer for Into Egypt in 2011.

Hammad's published books include Born Palestinian, Born Black, originally released by Harlem River Press in 1996 and reprinted by UpSet Press in 2010; Drops of This Story, also from Harlem River Press in 1996; Zaatar Diva, published by Cypher Books in 2006; and Breaking Poems, published by Cypher Books in 2008. Her work has appeared in numerous periodicals and has been included in a wide range of anthologies. Among her awards are the Audre Lorde Writing Award from Hunter College, received in 1995 and again in 2000; the Morris Center for Healing Poetry Award in 1996; a New York Mills Artist Residency in 1998; a Van Lier Fellowship in 1999; the 2001 Emerging Artist Award from the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute at NYU; and the 2009 American Book Awards.