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 younger sister, Simi, is a professor of green architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her partner, Ezra is an atmospheric scientist, their daughter, Vesper, is 3 years old, and their twins Esme and Quinn are brand new. 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 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 turned into seven). I spent three 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 five years, my pitch perfect if penniless gypsy life has taken me to over 30 countries on five continents with longer stints in Bangkok, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, London, and Mexico City.
I moved to New York in 2012 to work on getting my manuscripts published. 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 selling a coffee table book of travel photographs and poems called The Long Way Home, and working on a new collection of travel themed erotic stories.
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 March 21, 2013.