Zein El-Amine

Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese American published poet and writer. His poems have appeared in Plume, Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, and many other literary journals and anthologies. Zein was awarded the Megaphone Prize for his collection of short stories titled “Is This How You Eat a Watermelon.” Zein’s short stories have appeared in Lit Hub and Electric Literature, among others. Zein lives in Washington, DC, and teaches at American and Georgetown universities.

During his residency, Zein hopes to finalize the first draft of a novel he has worked on for the past year and a half. The goal is to have a readable manuscript to send to a literary agent that has shown interest in the novel. The main task will be stringing together the various chapters of the first draft and finalizing their chronology. The novel is set in Saudi Arabia, and centers around the “compound fever” brought on by the social dysfunction of expat compounds during the oil rush.