Rawah Arja

Rawah Arja is a writer and teacher from Western Sydney. Her first book, The F Team, was published by Giramondo in 2020. Her writing has featured in Arab, Australian, Other, SBS Voices and at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. She has received a fellowship from WestWords Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residential Program, is a member of the Finishing School collective of women writers, and teaches creative writing at schools and workshops. She was one of two 2020-2021 Western Sydney Writers in Residence, a project funded by the Copyright Agency Limited overseen by Writing and Society (WSU) and WestWords.

All essays by Rawah Arja

Essay: Rawah Arjaon family life

An Introvert’s Guide To Surviving An Arab Family of Extroverts

How could I forget the rules? I put them in place in my very own Introvert’s Guide to Surviving an Arab Family of Extroverts. It’s not a document that anyone can see or get hold of, rather it’s the way I’ve broken things down to guide my anxiety and me along. Oh, and the extroverts are a loud, 25-strong Lebanese clan – all of us living in three houses side by side on the same street in Punchbowl, South Western Sydney, roaming freely onto each other’s properties with detached fences and clearly no boundaries.
Sep. 2020 • • •