Layla Faraj, Artistic Director
Idea Viola, Dancer
Sepi Owlad, Photographer
ABJAD HAWAZ is a collaborative shoot exploring the embodiment of language beyond the mouth and tongue. Modern dancer Idea Viola is depicted in twenty-eight different poses designed by Layla Faraj for each of the letters in the Arabic alphabet, abstracting the human form and connecting the phonetic to the corporeal. Highlighting a female figure—one that is often hidden, obscured, or forbidden to depict in traditional Islamic and Arab art—alongside the long-standing Arabic art-form of calligraphy, this project brings a well-respected artistic practice in contact with a body that is often disrespected or disappeared; it reimagines the female image as a symbol of equal status to the alphabet of the Qur’aan, the alphabet of the Prophet, and the alphabet that is used to create the artistic motifs on mosques. In both a reclamation of language for women and of the sanctity of the female body, ABJAD HAWAZ is as holy as it is human.
Mizna 2026
Charcoal on Paper
Typewriter experimentation
“We exist within an indispensable asset—language. Sooner or later though, writers who belong to multiple tongues, cultures, and heritages come across a curiosity: how to break away from English and honor our ancestry through the plurality language asks of us.”
Mizna 2026
Charcoal on Paper
Reflecting on Mizna’s history of experimentation, disobedience, and playfulness—and during National Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage month—this Mizna Online feature presents ten archival works and thirty original prompts curated by NNAAC Fellow Layla Faraj, exploring language and form in our community. All prompts are inspired by the poetic works published in this feature, and all materials are meant to encourage a bartering, breaking, or bending of language. They are divided into four sections, one for each week.
Charcoal on Paper
A series of album covers inspired by classical music sung by Arab women.
Charcoal on Paper 2026
An celebration of the female body, which is often deemed as ayb or shameful.
Created on Procreate
Inspired by the rich and long-standing history of using an Arabic coffee cup both in social settings and as a means of telling the future.
Created on Procreate
Inspired by a Mahmoud Darwish poem: And I telll myself, my darkness will birth a moon.
Linocut Prints on Envelopes
A series of envelope designs inspired by gathered visual motifs on Bed-Stuy Buildings.
Layla Kinjawi Faraj is a writer, artist, and translator based in Brooklyn. Born to Syrian immigrant parents, Layla’s work often revolves around what is remembered, what is inherited, and the space between the two. Whether visual or written, she dedicates her time to spotlighting female narratives and images, with a special interest in rupturing the taboo or shameful. She firmly believes that women cannot wait for others to give them the space and freedom to express themselves: they must claim it even if/in order to create chaos; she believes that good art is art that aims to tells a disruptive truth.
A graduate from Barnard College, she has worked as an editor and translator for Whiting Award Winning SWANA Magazine, Mizna, and Ottoway Award winning magazine, ArabLit Quarterly. Her work for them has primarily revolved around translating Syrian women’s work, spotlighting Gazan voices, and meditating on her own relationship to language and identity.
Apart from her work at these SWANA magazines, her written and visual work has been featured in LitHub, The New York Times, and in a WhatsApp short film. All of these published projects have revolved around her own familial history and the plight of the Arab immigrant in America.
She has won many awards for her work, including a Webby Award in 2025, first place in a New York Times essay-writing contest, and several awards from her alma mater, Barnard College, including The Howard M. Teichmann Writing Prize.
2025
Phi Beta Kappa Inductee (2025)
The Howard M. Teichmann Writing Prize Awardee (2025)
The William Haller Prize for Excellence in The Study of English Literature Awardee (2025)
Deans List (2021-2025)
Program Assistant
2026 - Present
Barnard College Writing Center
Graduate Assistant
Head-Fellow
Writing Fellow
2022 — Present
Gernert Company
Legal Translator
2025 — 2026
National Network of Arab American Communities
Non-Profit Leadership Fellow
2025 — 2026
Mizna
Editorial Assistant
2024 — 2026
ArabLit Quarterly
Translation Staff
2024 — 2025
PEN America
Freedom to Write Intern
2023
Uptown Stories
Teaching Assistant
2023
Koukash Review
Assistant Editor
2022
Documentary (Branded) 2025
The New York Times Essay Writing Contest Fist Prize (2022)
by Lakshmi Rivera Amin
https://hyperallergic.com/passports-prints-and-protest-at-the-2025-ny-art-book-fair/
‘WhatsApp releases short film ‘Happiness and Love | A True Story on WhatsApp’ highlighting Layla Faraj, BC ’25’, The Columbia Spectator
by Chris Mendell
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/arts-and-culture/2024/04/07/whatsapp-releases-short-film-happiness-and-love-a-true-story-on-whatsapp-highlighting-layla-faraj-bc-25/
‘PeopleHop: Modern Love College Essay Contest Winner Layla Faraj’, Bwog
by Elizabeth Walker
https://bwog.com/2022/05/peoplehop-modern-love-college-essay-contest-winner-layla-faraj/
‘Layla Kinjawi Faraj Wins Modern Love College Essay Contest’, The New York Times
by Modern Love Editors
https://www.nytco.com/press/layla-kinjawi-faraj-wins-modern-love-college-essay-contest/
‘Short film reveals how a family torn apart by Syrian war stayed connected on WhatsApp’, The Drum
by Audrey Kemp
https://www.thedrum.com/news/short-film-reveals-how-family-separated-the-syrian-war-stayed-connected-with
CONTACT
Email: Layla.kfaraj@gmail.com
Instagram: @Layla.kfaraj
Last Updated 24.10.31
LAYLA KINJAWI FARAJ
ليلى كنجاوي فرج
The New York Times
Winner of the Modern-Love Essay Contest, Faraj published an essay on her immigrant family’s WhatsApp groupchat. This Essay would later become a short-film in collaboration with WhatsApp and would earn a Webby Award.
Online Poem
Before Trump’s current term as president, citizens from sixteen countries were offered Temporary Protective Status, or TPS. As of September 2025, only eight remain: TPS has now been revoked for citizens of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela. This leaves over one million U.S. residents with a sixty day notice to leave the country, a cruel and undiscussed form of deportation. Included in the million are some of my own family and friends, to whom I dedicate this poem.
Mizna 26.1 Kindred
Mizna 25.2 Futurities
Mizna 25.2 Catasrophe
Print Issues
Since 1999, Mizna has promoted experimental approaches to art, literature, and film; work that questions and expands the forms and conceptual frameworks of Arab and SWANA culture. We publish a biannual print literary and art journal, Mizna, and Mizna Online, a digital platform for literary and multidisciplinary work reflecting critically on the current realities of the SWANA region and beyond.
Listed above is a selection of printed material that Faraj worked on in her time as editorial assistant.
by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University and the A.M. Qattan Foundation (2022)
A new platform for Palestinian playwrights to explore contemporary themes through an historic medium of performance. Faraj worked on marketing and outreach.
Mizna Online
Online Folio
What happens when we let our mother tongue bite, lick, swallow, or spit an English poem? What does it mean for a writer to have multiple languages they live in, around, and against?
Reflecting on Mizna’s history of experimentation, disobedience, and playfulness—and during National Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage month—this Mizna Online feature presents ten archival works and thirty original prompts curated by NNAAC Fellow Layla Faraj, exploring language and form in our community. All prompts are inspired by the poetic works published in this feature, and all materials are meant to encourage a bartering, breaking, or bending of language. They are divided into four sections, one for each week.
Week One, Lexicality and Visuality: poems by Andrea Abi-Karam and Danielle Badra
Week Two, Translinguistics: poems by Banah el Ghadbanah, Emily Ahmed, and Dina Omar
Week Three, Struggle as Language: poems by George Abraham and Nancy Agabian
Week Four, Complicating Linguistic Traditions: poems by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and k. Eltinaé.
Editorial Introduction and Poetry Curation for On Distance by Emily Ahmed
On Distance by Emily Ahmed is a collection of poetry that explores familial fictions and reality; myth and collective memory. Each poem can be read as a line that either moves toward or away from a pulsing, blurry core: the concept of home. The lines are sometimes short and tender, other times long and searching, but the reader’s attention is always directed toward the distance needed to reach the core.
ِEditorial Introduction and Poetry Curation for Ash and Air: A Poetry Folio by Nadine Murtaja
Ash and Air is the poetry of a young woman who is both writing through and in resistance to a very tangible fear of death. Since the recent escalation of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, I have found myself wondering what role writing has to play in such a moment. Murtaja’s poetry reminded me. To write is to both stay alive and to live on. While Ash and Air is full of uncertainty and pain, it will live on to see a liberated Palestine and as such, is a chapbook that perfectly captures the flame of the Palestinian spirit, Sumud, and resilience.
Murtaja’s chapbook is available for purchase from Amygdala Books. The volume includes both the English translations by Fatema Alhashemi and the original Arabic poems. All sales go to Nadine to support herself and her family in meeting their basic needs in Gaza.
Featuring poets Mazen Halabi, Mohja Kahf, and Banah Ghadbanah.
There are two main conditions to storytelling: necessity and safety. We at Mizna hope that 2025 will be the year of safety and storytelling for the Syrian community in all its religions, ethnicities, generations, and identities. Layla Faraj started this hope with Halabi’s story, and extends her hope to all Syrians whose stories are surfacing after decades of extreme violence, censorship, and fear.
Interviewer and Translator for the following online pieces:
1. Maya Abu al-Hayyat on Absent Mothers, the End of Love, and Palestinian Liberation
2. Jokha Alharthi on Her Latest Novel: ‘Humans Connect through Stories’
3. Barrack Rima on Her Beirut Trilogy & Why Art Is (and Sometimes Isn’t) A Path to Liberation
Print Translation
Faraj’s first published translation work, featured in ALQ‘s Wedding Issue in Fall 2022. For this issue, Faraj translated vereses from a Syrian folk song known as an Arada, which is song at weddings for the bride and groom.
Flash Fiction Judge
A special issue of ALQ in collaboration with Komet Kashakeel. This is a collection of fifteen short stories in Arabic and English, by the finalists of our 2024 Arabic Flash Fiction prize, as well as excerpts from interviews with the authors. Faraj was a judge for this prize.
Arabic Language Proof-reader
An anthology that celebrates the power of culture in Palestinian resistance, with selections of memoir, short stories, essays, book reviews, personal narrative, poetry, and art.