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Kadhim Al-Hallaq,
pen name of Kadhim Joni Mahdi, was born in Basra, Iraq. A fiction writer, he
was jailed in 1991 for speaking against the government and jailed again in 1994
for his involvement with a literary group. On release from prison, he fled via
Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the United States where he was granted refugee
status.
His short stories and non-fiction
have been published in Arabic literary journals, and a first collection of
short stories (“Shadow of Sleepiness") was published in 1997 in Damascus,
Syria. His Arabic translations of Deepak Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws
of Success” and Piero Perrucci’s “What We May Be” are in the process of being
published, as is a new collection of very short stories called “The Telescope.”
He now lives in Phoenix, Arizona and supports himself as a barber while trying
to finish a novel. In 2000 he received the Hellman-Hammett Grant, awarded
to writers persecuted in their home countries
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