Layla Zbinden

Layla is a 2025 graduate of University of Southern California, with a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity and is a Wallin Postdoctoral Fellow at Macalester College in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Born to an American dad and an Egyptian mom and raised in San Diego, Layla grew up immersed in borderland cultural expressions like aesthetics, poetry, visual artwork, and photography. They developed an interest in stories at a young age, devouring fantasy and sci-fi novels into the early hours of dawn and began to write fiction in third grade. However, in graduate school they started taking writing seriously with a focus on transnational, feminist, and illness narratives. They have since worked with community organizations, artists, and researchers to explore the narratives of Arab diasporas with an attunement to the ways that immigration, colonization and imperialism, gender, and health shape the lives – and deaths – of everyday women.