Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus

Layla Al-Zubaidi is Director of the Southern Africa Office of the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Cape Town. She headed the Foundation's Middle East Office in Beirut for six years, served as Program Manager at its office in Ramallah and worked for several media and development institutions. She graduated from Freie Universitat Berlin with a thesis on Syria's cultural sector. Al-Zubaidi has published on women's rights and issues of freedom of expression, edits the magazine Perspectives Middle East and is co-editor (with Larbi Sadiki) of Unmaking Power: Negotiating the Democratic Void in the Arab Middle East (forthcoming). She is also on the Executive Committee of Freemuse -- World Forum on Music and Censorship. Matthew Cassel is a journalist and photographer based in the Middle East since 2004. Formerly Assistant Editor of The Electronic Intifada online journal, he is a journalist with Al Jazeera English and a contributor to numerous other publications. Cassel learned Arabic and about the Middle East by living and working in Palestinian refugee camps and travelling the region. He is connected to activists, journalists, writers, artists and others at the forefront of the movement for change in the region.