Back Where I Came From: Memoir, Memory, and Diaspora

Eufemia Fantetti’s (she/her) fiction collection, A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love, was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Award and won a Bressani Prize. Her second book, My Father, Fortune-tellers & Me: A Memoir, was a finalist for the 2024 Canadian Book Club Awards. Her nonfiction can be found in various anthologies, including Love Me True, Body & Soul and Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity and Home, and one she co-edited, Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language. She teaches writing at Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber.

ROZA NOZARI is a writer, artist and therapist based in Tkaronto (“Toronto”) and known as YallaRoza on social media. Her work weaves together writing and visual art to share stories of wounding, healing and community. It invites radical reimaginings of our world, towards one more invested in cross-generational, collective healing and liberation. She is the illustrator of three children’s books: Little People, Big Dreams’ Mindy Kaling (2021), Fluffy and the Stars (2023) and The Anti-Racist Kitchen (2023). Her illustrations have been featured locally and internationally—from university campuses to sports arenas and pride festivals.

Alexandra C. Yeboah (she/her) is a Brampton-based writer, storyteller and creative facilitator whose work often drifts between the heartfelt and the hilariously human. A quiet observer with a mischievous curiosity, she writes stories exploring identity, discovery, belonging, and life’s awkward corners. Her nonfiction and poetry appear in Back Where I Came From, UpRising, and The Art of Solidarity anthologies. Alexandra is a second-generation Canadian with Jamaican and Ghanaian ancestry who is passionate about people, history, and culture. When not writing or facilitating, Alexandra can be found pretending her life is musical, daydreaming, or writing somewhere outdoorsy or by the light.

Omar Mouallem (he/him) is an author, filmmaker, educator, and the former editor-in-chief of Edify magazine. His book, How Muslims Shaped the Americas, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2021, and his documentary, The Lebanese Burger Mafia, which documents the unlikely link between fast-food and Lebanon’s civil war, was nominated for a James Beard Media Award honouring the world’s best food-related storytelling. Omar is also the founder of PanU School of Writing, a virtual school he founded in support of writers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.