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  Now available from Kindle: audiobook edition of  Syrian Folktales   by Muna Imady . Book Description:  This delightful book relates folktales from various regions of Syria. Each folktale is located on a regional map and is accompanied by a local, related recipe. CONTEST WINNER WILD RIVER REVIEW, "A DAMSCENE STORY" Read more posts about Muna and her books  HERE .  To purchase copies of this book at 25% discount, use code FF25 at  MSI Press webstore . Want to buy this book and not have to pay for it? Ask your local library to purchase and shelve it. Sign up for the MSI Press LLC monthly newsletter (recent releases, sales/discounts, awards, reviews, Amazon top 100 list, author advice, and more -- stay up to date)   Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?  We help writers become award-winning published authors. One writer at a time. We are a family, not a factory. Do you have a future with us? Turned away by ot

  excerpt from  Damascus amid the War  (M. Imady) --     Pre-war Poems 1-10 1. Spring Cleaning                                           Secretly,                                           I tiptoed into                                           The dark chambers                                            Of my heart,       Swept away the grief and sorrow,     Scrubbed the bad memories out,                                            Opened up the windows                                            And let in the sunlight. ***   2. A Thought It slipped through my fingers Fell on the ground - I heard its cry echo in my mind- Desperately, On knees and elbows I searched for it all day But the thought Had faded away.   **       3. Last Dance Politely, I bowed to my cares And asked them for a dance. Joyfully … I swung my arms around them And danced them away. ***   4. New Hair Style Feverishly mad I unbraid my worries

  Excerpt from  Syrian Folktales   by Muna Imady      A Brief Overview of Syria   The Syrian Arab Republic occupies an area of 185,000 square km. and has a population of more than 18 million.  It borders Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan and Palestine to the south and Lebanon and the Mediterranean to the west.   Syria also lies along major trade routes linking Africa, Asia and Europe . Since the dawn of civilization, Syria has been a meeting place and a crossroads, where different people, cultures and world empires met.  Syrian soil has witnessed the oldest civilizations on the globe dating back to the fourth millennium B.C., including Mari, Ebla and Ugarit where one the world’s first alphabets was discovered. Syria ’s chief agricultural products are cotton, wheat, barley, different fruits and vegetables, meat, milk and milk products.  Important industrial products include textiles, fertilizer, petroleum products, cement, glass, processed foods, marble

                    One of the fun things that a publisher (or at least, an acquisitions editor) gets to experience is meeting more than one member of a family -- as authors whose work we publish, In this series of presenting family authors, we take note of the Imady writers, who have written several exciting and award-winning books. Above pictured, left to right, is Elaine Imady, the mother of Muna (daughter) and Omar (son). Elaine's book, Road to Damascus , a memoir of her physical and emotional journey from New York to Syria with her husband, Mohammed, was the first runner-up in the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award competition. Muna, who published two books with MSI Press -- the popular Syrian Folktales and the gut-wrenching Damascus amid the War , passed away suddenly and unexpectedly just as she finished the latter book; may she rest in peace. Omar's MSI Press books are quite different one from another: The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society and When You're Shoved from th

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with Damascus amid the War by Mona Imady . For more posts about this book and its author, click  HERE . For more posts about the Middle East, click HERE                                    This book is on discounted sale at the  MSI Press webstore . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .    

  excerpt from Damascus amid the War (M. Imady) --              Commentary   In Muna Imady’s writing we witness a kind of devolution from poetry that was filled with vivid imagery and striking metaphors to that which was made to carry words of the brutality of war. Stripped of Muna’s imaginative, powerful, evocative language, her poetry becomes savagely direct, honest to the point of shocking readers with its transformation.   The world of Muna’s early poetry has become broken, brutalized, burned, and bombed. With it, Muna’s heart is broken; her imagination has been filled with what is dark and laden with grief. The simplicity of most of the war poems, when compared with those of her pre-war output give readers a stark reminder of the effects of war in ways that the news cannot. War breaks people and it transforms artistry into something it was never meant to be, painting a picture in words of the way the human spirit can be crushed, the way poetry becomes reportage. The poetry that h