Omar Mouallem is an author, filmmaker, and educator. His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, WIRED, and The New Yorker, and his latest book, Praying to the West, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2021 and nominated for two Alberta Literary Awards in the categories of Memoir and Nonfiction. His short documentary The Last Baron, about the unlikely link between a Canadian fast-food institution and the Lebanese civil war, is currently being expanded into a feature film to be released later this year. Omar is also the “fake dean” of Pandemic University, a virtual school he founded in support of writers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, with his family.