Please join us for a special program with Moroccan-Dutch politician and writer Tofik Dibi, author of Djinn. He will appear in conversation with Nicolaas P. Barr, whose English translation of Djinn was published by SUNY Press in its Queer Politics and Cultures series. Anu Taranath, Teaching Professor in the Comparative History of Ideas and English at University of Washington, will moderate the program. The son of Moroccan immigrants, Tofik Dibi was elected to the Dutch Parliament in 2006 at just twenty-six years old. During his six years in office, he fought for the equal rights of Dutch Muslims against a political elite that cast them as misogynists, homophobes, and, after 9/11, terrorists. But Dibi himself never came out publicly as queer—until he wrote Djinn. A bestseller upon its publication in Dutch in 2015, it tells the poignant, at times heartbreaking, story of Dibi’s coming-of-age as a gay Muslim man with humor and grace.  

Tofik Dibi is an author and playwright who served as Member of Parliament in the Netherlands from 2006 to 2012. Nicolaas P. Barr teaches in the Department of Comparative History of Ideas at the University of Washington. Anu Taranath is a speaker, facilitator, professor and writer, whose book, Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, was named a Washington State Book Award Finalist, one of Fodor’s Travels “13 Books to Inspire Your Travels," and was selected as one of Oprah Magazine's "26 Best Travel Books,"