Noam Keim
Noam Keim
Writer: Creative Non-Fiction
France
Spring 2024
Contact Info
Website: www.thelandisholy.com
Instagram & X (formerly Twitter) @thelandisholy
BIOGRAPHY
Noam Keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur freak. Born a settler of Occupied Palestine in an Arab Jewish family hailing from Morocco, noam grew up in France, first in Mulhouse at the German and Swiss border, then in Paris for their studies. After graduating with their masters in American Visual Culture, noam moved to Ann Arbor Michigan for a fellowship. Many tribulations with immigration later, they now live on stolen Lenni-Lenape land (known as Philadelphia) where they build webs of support for individuals impacted by carceral systems. They believe that their childhood anti-zionist beliefs is what brought them to their abolitionist practices. Their non-fiction writing weaves themes close to their heart: reverence to the land, healing, queerness, colonialism, plants, abolition. They are a Lambda Literary ’22 Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow, a Roots.Wounds.Words '23 fellow, a Tin House Winter Workshop '23 participant and a Sewanee '23 contributor. Their writing has been published/is forthcoming in ALOCASIA, Foglifter, The Massachusetts Review, and The Kenyon Review. Their debut essay collection, The Land is Holy, comes out via Radix Media in May 2024. Connect via IG/Twitter @thelandisholy or thelandisholy.com.
PROJECT
At Nawat Fes, noam will interrogate traditional indigenous crafts as both a space of indigenous remembrance and portals towards liberatory futures. As a writer whose work focuses on memory practices as foundational to imagining new futures, noam is interested in learning from rugmakers in Fes about the specificity of their craft such as the plants used for dying the fibers, and the language of symbols used in each rug. What are the traditions being upheld? What are the local resources used for production? In what ways does globalization shift the processes? What are the tensions? What are the languages created in these exchanges? Their exploration will be the starting point of a longform project that will surely be shaped by the medina of Fes. The grandchild of Moroccan Jews, noam is also looking forward to learning more about the rich Jewish history of Fes and getting lost in the alleyways of its memory.