Mariam Said was born in Beirut, in Lebanon. She studied at the American University of Beirut and Columbia University, in New York, where she currently resides. She participated and contributed to several cultural organizations, like the Freedom Theatre, in the West Bank, and ArteEast, whose objective is to promote the work of Middle-Eastern artists. She was a founding member of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, in 1980. She is the Vice-President of the Barenboim-Said Foundation, started in 1999 by her late husband, the intellectual Edward Said, and the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, with whom she runs the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. In 2009, she published the acclaimed memoir, written by her mother Wadad Maksidi Cortas, World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman.
Mariam Said
Writer, activist
