A. A. Telmesani is a Writing Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an Adjunct Professor of English & Creative Writing at Connecticut State College, New Haven.
Telmesani holds a BA in English from the University of Connecticut, an MA in Religion from Claremont Graduate University and an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on twelfth/thirteenth century Andalusian Sufi literature, philosophy and metaphysics. More than any other influence on Telmesani’s writing is his primary research subject, the great Andalusian Sufi master Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), whose corpus went on to shape Sufi discourse and praxis for the nearly eight-hundred years since his death in Damascus in 1240 CE.
Telmesani’s first book, House of Abbas: the Legacy of Harun al-Rashid (Claritas Books, London, UK) is a pentameter play that fictionalizes the events of a major civil war between two brothers—sons of the famous Caliph Harun al-Rashid (d. 809) vying for the Caliphal throne at Baghdad in the ninth century CE. Since 2008 Telmesani has published several poems in literary journals, including in four volumes of Tofu Ink Arts Press.
For his doctoral degree, A.A. Telmesani created a fictional ancient civilization—the Zagra Valley—a magical realist literary universe in which interactions between human, animal, and supernatural creatures and entities are normative and mundane. Everything we know about the Zagra Valley is thanks to a massive cache of codices discovered at an archaeological dig at a mountain temple at Anbur in the Upper Zagra. These codices, produced by a circle of mystic philosophers, provide us with a worldview and history of the Valley through their own unique experiences as wandering mystic polymaths with unique backgrounds and writing styles. The first major publication of writings from the Zagra Valley, Zagra Zephyrs: Volume One is out now from Tofu Ink Press.
