Randa Jarrar

Randa Jarrar (born 1978) is an American writer and translator. Her first novel, the coming-of-age story A Map of Home (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab-American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays, and the collection, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (2016). She teaches creative writing in an MFA program at California State University at Fresno where she is currently on leave. In 2018 Jarrar attracted public attention for making statements critical of Barbara Bush on social media following her death. 2Biography Randa Jarrar was born in 1978 in Chicago to a Greek-Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt. After the Gulf War in 1991, she and her family returned to the United States, living in the New York area. Jarrar studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, receiving an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. She has taught College Writing, Creative Writing, and Arab-American literatur