This month we are honored to be featuring renowned spoken word artist and poet Omar Offendum as our featured performer. There will be no open mic this month, just a performance and discussion.
Omar Offendum is a Syrian-American rapper and spoken word artist. Known for his unique blend of hip-hop and Arabic poetry, he’s been featured on prominent world news outlets (Aljazeera, BBC, PBS, LA Times), lectured at a number of prestigious academic institutions (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, UT-Austin, UCLA, SOAS, American University of Beirut), collaborated with major museums and cultural organizations (LACMA / Penn Museum / Ithra / Shangri-La / Arab-American National Museum), and helped raise millions of dollars for various humanitarian relief groups (Islamic Relief, Karam Foundation, Syrian-American Medical Society).
Offendum was recently named a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, an Arab America Foundation "40 Under 40" award recipient, and a member of both the Pillars Fund cohort for Muslim Narrative Change and the RaceForward Butterfly Lab cohort for Immigrant Narrative Strategy. He currently resides in the great state of New York with his wife and two little children, while daydreaming about the jasmine tree-lined streets of Damascus.