Aya Labanieh is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, and her research centers on conspiracy theories, modernity, and religion in twentieth century Middle Eastern literature and politics. Her poetry has previously appeared in COUNTERCLOCK Journal and The Lamp literary magazine, and several of her poems were awarded the University of California, Irvine Bret Baldwin Prize. When she is not engaged in scholarship or fiction, she can likely be found organizing with political campaigns and unions in California and New York, her old and new homes respectively.