PUBLICATIONS
Multimedia
poetry
Nimrod International Journal
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Rhino Poetry
everything will be so good so soon
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Mizna
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We call to the Eye and the Night:
Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent
FICTION
Essays
What Training to Be a Doctor Taught Me About Abortion Care
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American Hijab: Why My Scarf is a Sociopolitical Statement, Not a Symbol of My Religiosity
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Doximity
How to Die, and Talk About Dying
Stop Dismissing Women and Those Who Treat Them
Global Health Mirrors American Health
Advice on Thriving in Med School
Why I Proposed My Own Elective in Medical School
All the Things I Have yet to Know
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Readings for Diversity & Social Justice, 4e
American Hijab: Why My Scarf is a Sociopolitical Statement, Not a Symbol of My Religiosity
photography
ABOUT
Dr. Mariam Gomaa is a physician and writer based in Washington, DC. She is the author of Between the Shadow & the Soul (Backbone Press).
She holds an M.D. from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a B.A. in Creative Writing and Biological Sciences from Northwestern University.
Her writing has appeared in Time, NBC News, Los Angeles Review of Books, Readings for Diversity and Social Justice 4e, and more. She was a 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop writer.
Her work is an exploration of womanhood, intersectional identity, and Arab American life.
Between the shadow & the soul
Between the Shadow & the Soul
is Mariam Gomaa's poetry and chapbook debut, published by Backbone Press.
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Gomaa’s first chapbook of poetry is elegant yet visceral, a quiet punch. In this gentle exploration of identity, Arabic phrases navigate us through a universe of diasporic laments and traumatic memories that embody the phrase “sawt al mara’a thawra” meaning “a woman’s voice is a revolution.”
PRAISE
Mariam Gomaa’s jewel of a debut offers readers the satisfyingly rich textures of a coming-of-age novel, delivered with the emotional intensity only poetry can provide. Each poem in this collection finds the apt image, the resonant word, to deliver the insights of a poet wise beyond her years.
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Author of Song & Error
In her evocative debut collection, Mariam Gomaa guides readers along the map of her life's many journeys. These poems criss-cross languages, cultures, nations and identities, asking where home really is, while showing how creating a self and becoming oneself is a vibrant ever-evolving process. Gomaa not only transforms her experiences, dreams and vision into a language that lives on the page, but stakes her claim as a poet we should all read and share with others.
John Keene, MacArthur fellow
Author of Seismosis, Counternarratives and Playland
Mariam Gomaa’s debut chapbook Between the Shadow & the Soul explores the in-between: a girlhood split between two countries, pregnancy loss and how to mourn what exists between being and not, and the complexities of love between inevitably flawed people. These poems are honest, attentive, and tender. Gomaa writes with her whole heart.
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Author of Deluge, Tunsiya/Amrikiya and Ebb
Mariam Gomaa is a true poet, and these poems combine lush sensuality with cosmic elegance in ways that make me ache, delight and marvel. In these poems, we are transported to Cairo, introduced to the lush landscape of the body in early pregnancy, and invited into a sensibility that is tender and knowing, emotionally available and singularly alive. These poems remind me of the restorative power of poetry, and they introduce an exquisite new voice.
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Author of Mary is a River and September: Poems
