Alia Yunis teaches video production and film festival management. She has written and presented around the world on Arab cinema, particularly in relation to the film business. She is the faculty founder of the ZU Middle East Film Festival (https://www.facebook.com/ZUMiddleEastFilmFestival), the only region wide student film festival, now in its fifth year, and the director of the newly formed UAE National Film Library & Archive.
A filmmaker, author, and journalist, Ms. Yunis is a Pen Emerging Voices fellow, and her debut novel, The Night Counter (Crown/Random House 2010), has been critically acclaimed by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and several other publications.
It was also chosen as a top summer read by the Chicago Tribune. She spent several years as an executive in international public relations and distribution in the film industry in Los Angeles, after working as an associate producer for Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ginny Durrin. In 2012, she produced Dreams in the Eyes, a short documentary that has played and won awards in several international film festivals.
Her other work includes articles for Los Angeles Times, Saveur, SportsTravel Magazine, and Aramco World, as well as stories in numerous anthologies. She has essays in the forthcoming Imagining the Arabian Nights (New York University Press, 2013), and Film Festivals and the Middle East (St. Andrew University Press, 2014). Ms. Yunis has a B.A. in journalism and political science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, an M.A. in film from American University, Washington, D.C. She was born in Chicago.