SAEED, JAMAL

JAMAL SAEED arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this, and his opposition to the al-Assads regimes, he was imprisoned for a total of twelve years; held without formal charge or judicial process. My Road from Damascus offers a tapestry of Saeed’s whole life and looks squarely at the brutality of prison, at beauty and poetry, hope and love. His middle-grade novel, Yara’s Spring, written with Sharon E. McKay, explores a girl’s coming of age in the midst of the Arab Spring.