Danny Ramadan

Passions

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Syrian-Canadian novelist, public speaker, columnist, and a gay refugee activist, who immigrated to Lebanon as a refugee in 2012, before immigrating to Vancouver, British Columbia in September 2014. Ramadan was picked as the grand marshal of the Vancouver Pride Festival 2016, for his work supporting LGBTQ-identifying refugees and newcomers. He was awarded the Social Activist StandOut Award by the Vancouver Pride Society, and was picked as one of the 25 Top Immigrants to Canada in 2017 by Canadian Immigrant as well as Recipient of the 2018 Bonham Centre Award from the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. He speaks publicly about issues related to gay Syrian refugees and he wrote a bi-weekly column for Daily Xtra between 2012 and 2016. Ramadan has translated the work of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi to English, released in 2015 by Greystone Books under the title 1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think. Ramadan published two collections of short stories in Arabic while he lived in Egypt. His first collection, Death and Other Fools, was released by Dar Laila in 2004. His second collection, Aria, was released by Dar Malameh in 2008. The Clothesline Swing is Ramadan's debut novel in English. Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, the novel tells the epic story of two male lovers anchored to the memory of a dying Syria. The Clothesline Swing won the Independent Publisher Book Awards' Golden Medal in the LGBT category, as well as the Canadian Authors Association's Fred Kerner Award for Best Overall Fiction Book in 2017, was picked among The Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books 2017, and was number 7 of the Toronto Star Top 10 Books of 2017. The Clothesline Swing was translated to Hebrew and released in May 2018 as well as French, to be released in August 2019. Link to Wikipedia biography