ELSA MARSTON is an award-winning author of over 20 teen and children’s books, specializing in the Middle East and North Africa, ancient and modern. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Harvard University with further study at the American University of Beirut, and has lived in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia with her husband, the late Professor Iliya Harik of Indiana University. In addition to her books with Wisdom Tales (The Compassionate Warrior and The Olive Tree), her recent work includes Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories About Teens in the Arab World, Women in the Middle East: Tradition and Change, The Byzantine Empire, and Muhammad of Mecca, a historical biography. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
BARBARA PETZEN is Director, Middle East Connections, and sits on the board of directors of the Abd el-Kader Education Project. She previously served as outreach coordinator at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She has designed and taught courses on Middle Eastern history, Islam, and women’s studies at Dalhousie University and St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, Canada. She earned degrees from Columbia College and Oxford University, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Her academic interests include the history and present concerns of women in the Middle East and the Islamic world, the role of Islam in Middle Eastern and other societies, relations and perceptions between the Islamic world and the West, and the necessity for globalizing K-12 education in the United States.