Zainab Hussein is a writer born in Basra, Iraq and raised across Iran, Yemen, and Syria; then Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. She received her M.F.A. from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the composition and fiction programs and was awarded a Schaeffer Graduate Fellowship by the International Center for Writing and Translation.
At MacDowell, Hussein worked on a book of interconnected poems and short stories focusing on Islam, East-West relations, and the beauty of the struggle for liberation, love, and land.