Sherine Elbanhawy (she/her) is an Egyptian-Canadian writer from Cairo, currently living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal QC) on the unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka. She’s a grad student in the English Literature department at Concordia, and has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She’s the founder of Rowayat, a literary magazine showcasing Egyptian and SWANA writers. Her short story “Night Stencils” won the 2021 Summer Short Story Prize. Her writing has been published in The Masters Review, The Malahat Review, Room Magazine, Arablit and others. She believes in the power of stories, after all, stories are how she has survived life. They’re the air, the escapism, and the erotic pleasure. There’s nothing that intrigues her more than learning and discovering new writers every day. She believes in reading marginalized stories, in reading women’s stories, and she has never felt at home as much as when she reads diaspora stories.