Abeer's Bio
I am a writer, photographer, and editor. You can see my publications here, my photographs here, and my editing website at AbeerPrep.com.
I was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and lived in the university town of Nsukka until I was 13. My family then moved to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I completed high school. My little brother Maher works for PNC Bank as an IT consultant and lives in Pittsburgh along with its other football addled residents (see jollybengali.net for evidence). My younger sister, Simi, is a professor of green architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her partner, Ezra is an atmospheric scientist, and their daughter, Vesper Woodhoque, is 2 years old. My parents live in Pittsburgh where my father is a fiction writer and retired professor of geology and my mother teaches computers and economics.
I consider Philadelphia my first real home in the US as I spent the decade after high school in that vastly underrated city. I did business undergrad and grad school there and also worked and played frisbee and danced and biked all over town. However, San Francisco, where I lived for four years and did my writing degree, is my favourite city in the US, maybe in the world.
In the summer of 2005, armed with a one way ticket to Bangkok, I left San Francisco to go travelling for a year (this has turned into six). I spent close to two years, on and off, in Bangladesh and India during which I researched and wrote my second book and held two solo photography exhibitions, funded in part by a Fulbright Scholarship. The rest of the six years, my pitch perfect if penniless gypsy life has taken me to over 25 countries on four continents with longer stints in Bangkok, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, London, Mexico City, and New York.
I've just been granted a 2012 NEA Literature Fellowship and am moving to New York to pitch my manuscripts to agents and publishers. My first book, Olive Witch, is a memoir set in Nigeria, the States, and Bangladesh. My second is a novel in stories based in Bangladesh and India, called The Lovers and the Leavers. My current book (in progress), a novel called Memory Alone, is about memory loss and is set in Berkeley and Brooklyn. I am also working on a coffee table book of my travel photographs and poems, and occasionally updating my travel blog.
The best way to get in touch with me is via email, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, I give good email, so bring it on.
Last updated November 28, 2011.