Rafeef Ziadah

Ziadah was born in Beirut, Lebanon to Palestinian refugee parents[2] and began writing at a young age.[3] She grew up in Tunisia.[2] She attended York University in Toronto.[3] In 2004, she gave her first public performance after she was motivated by her experience of racism to write a poem.[3]

In 2009 Ziadah released her first spoken word album, Hadeel.[4] Ziadah produced Hadeel with a grant from the Ontario Arts Council within their Word of Mouth program in 2008.[5] Ziadah has traveled to countries all over the world to perform and conduct poetry workshops.[4] In 2011, Ziadah performed with Palestinian-American poet, Remi Kanazi in London, UK as part of the tour for his book, Poetic Injustice.[6] In 2012, Ziadah was chosen to represent Palestine at the South Bank Center Poets Olympiad.[4] In the same year, she performed at the World Village Festival in Helsinki.[7] During the summer of 2014, Ziadah contributed an opinion piece for The Guardian regarding the 2014 Gaza War and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.[8] On November 14, 2014 Ziadah performed at a benefit concert for Palestine with Palestinian Hip hop group, DAM-Palestine sponsored by Manchester Palestine Action.[9] Rafeef Ziadah is well known-for her poems "Shades of Anger" [10] and "We teach life, sir".[11] Ziadah's poem "We teach life, sir" became the inspiration for a photography show for display inside the Scottish Parliament.[12] The exhibit was titled, "We Teach Life: The Children of the Occupation."[12]