Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine

Biography

I’m the author of the story collection Dearborn (Tin House) and coeditor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging (Wayne State University Press). My fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, the Arkansas International, Witness, Pleiades, Fiction International, the Common, Epiphany, FOLIO, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and the Iron Horse Literary Review, among other publications. 

In my fiction writing, tragedy and comedy work in tandem, and in some cases, comedy transcends tragedy by embodying a broader range of emotions. When I put words down on the page, I’m most comfortable processing and dramatizing distressing matters through a comedic approach. It’s not easy to make readers laugh, but I find that when you do, they might be more willing to follow you down whatever path you take them on. Having said this, let me admit the following horror: I laugh at my own jokes. It’s a curse that I’ve inherited from my father’s side of the family: my paternal grandfather would burst into laughter before he even finished his jokes, as did my father. I’m trying to improve in this regard.  

I’ve previously taught at the American University of Beirut, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Kenyon College, and the University of Michigan-Dearborn.