Alia Yunis

Born in Chicago, ALIA YUNIS is a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow. She has worked as a journalist and filmmaker in several countries. As the daughter of an environmental engineer and a UN diplomat, she grew up in the Midwest, particularly the Twin Cities, and in Beirut during the civil war, graduating from high school in Athens, Greece. She completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Minnesota and American University in Washington, DC.

Her fiction has been published in several journals and anthologies, and her non-fiction work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Saveur, SportsTravel Magazine, and Aramco World. She has received awards for both her writing and film work.

Alia has read from her work at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Los Angeles Public Library, the West Hollywood Book Festival, and the World Stage. She has been awarded writing residencies at Hedgebrook and at the MacNamara Foundation in Maine. She currently teaches film and television at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.