May Mansoor Munn

May Mansoor Munn was born in Jerusalem to Palestinian-Quaker parents. Her native language is Arabic, but May fell in love with the English language when she attended the Friends Girls’ School, a boarding school for girls started by the Society of Friends, in Ramallah, the West Bank. May’s father was a long-time clerk of the Quaker meeting in Ramallah, a historically Christian city.

When May was only 15, she left home to attend college in the United States. She earned a B.A. in both English and Religion from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, at the age of 19. Later, she minored in history at the University of Houston.

Returning to Palestine after earning her bachelor’s degrees, May taught at the Friends Girls’ School, where her mother and grandmother had taught before her. In 1955, she married Isa Mansoor and moved back to the United States, settling in Dalton, Georgia, and then in Houston, Texas, where she taught world history while raising two children. The untimely death of her husband Isa left May a young widow with two teenagers until she met Albert Munn, a genial and humorous Canadian, at Live Oak Friends Meeting in Houston.

Albert and May married, allowing May to retire from teaching and devote herself to writing, her true passion. She had always written, but in this middle period of her life, her writing came into full bloom. She published numerous essays, articles, poetry, and short stories. Her work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Ms. magazine, in several collections of writing from the Middle East, and in a variety of other publications. Her novel Ladies of the Dance was published in 2013.

May lives in Houston with her husband, Albert.