Farrah Sarafa

Farrah Sarafa (Arabic: فرح صرافته‎) is an Arab-American poet, scholar, and cultural activist based in Manhattan. She is best known for her work as an anti war poet and professor. She is of Palestinian and Chaldean descent.

Born to a Palestinian mother from Tulkarem, West Bank and a Chaldean father from Tel Keppe, Iraq, post colonialism, occupation and human rights inform her research and social justice activism. Her notable academic research on North African-French diaspora- Re-writing Algerian Nationalism Through the Discourse of the Woman was published by the University of California Santa Cruz Press in 2006. She spoke on “Growing up Iraqi in the United States” at Boston College and won the Marjorie Rappaport Hopwood award for her poem “Olive.” Her poems “Palestine Fig”, first published in Arabesques, “Let the Land Choose”, “Warfire”, “The Dead Sea”, and “Blood, Sand, and Tears of a Young Boy” have been featured in various magazines, anthologies and textbooks. Inspired by Edward Said’s work on Orientalism, postcolonial studies and Comparative Literature, Sarafa worked under his tutelage at Columbia University to obtain a master’s degree in 2009. She is now Professor of Literature and Modern Languages at Pace University.

Sarafa was the recipient of a SLS Summer Writing Scholarship and Grant, a second place Marjorie Rappaport Award, and earned 2nd place in the Chistell Writing Contest for “To my Brother” and received the Hopwood Award for her poem "Olive". Her poems have appeared in publications including Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Avatar Review, Frigg Magazine, Litchfield Review, Cerebration, Foliate Oak, Diagram, Feile-Festa, mediterranean.nu, Tablet Review, and Voices in Wartime. Sarafa’s work as a writer and columnist for Blackbook, Arte Fuse, GreenandSave, the Village Voice, NYArt Beat, Scallywag & Vagabond culminated in her founding Fractyll Culture Magazine. Based on the notion that ‘culture is a fractal’, whose various spokes melodically amount to literature, travel, art, fashion, health, race and music, it underscores industry pioneers, red carpet eventsand grassroots movements.