Alumni Spotlight: Dina Rabadi ’92

Dina Rabadi is a multicultural author, educator and activist. Born in Jordan in 1974 to a Jordanian father and a Czech mother; Rabadi and her family immigrated to the United States in 1978. She has been published in over twenty periodicals including The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and Fiction (2003 short story finalist.) She recently published her debut collection of stories titled Peter’s Moonlight Photography and Other Stories. She graduated from Smith College with a degree in Government (International Relations) and is now completing her MA in Education at Depaul University. She plans to specialize in writing instruction and is interested in seeing how the U.S. public education system can be improved by applying successful practices in other countries such as Finland and Costa Rica.

Rabadi has been awarded grants and awards from the Illinois Arts Council, the Vogelstein Foundation for travel to the Middle East, and completed a writing residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon. Additionally, Rabadi was awarded a merit-based scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Community of Writers in Fiction and was made a Fellow in the Arts by the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership in New York.

Rabadi has lectured at Notre Dame University and Ball State University among others. Dina’s media appearances include the Chicago Tribune, Radio Islam, Emmy-award winning Theresa Carter’s “The Local Tourist” and Serena Gobbo’s Italian literary blog featuring international writers.

Nearly all of Dina’s writings deals with prevailing social problems and is most concerned with issues around immigration, international relations, gender and the environment. She founded Global Alliance of Artists to highlight the role of artists as diplomats and states, “Artists are too often marginalized in society. We have a great deal to offer the world in terms of our creative and constructive view of the world– this view, and our ideas, can be used to help solve some of the most pressing social problems of our time.”

Why did you decide to attend the Indiana Academy?
I was attending Burris Laboratory School which is also in Muncie when I heard about the opening of the Indiana Academy. I wanted the chance to be with other creative, innovative types and to experience “college” at an early age. I am not saying my classmates at Burris were not also creative and innovative, but the Academy was shooting for that all around—with its selection requirements, the teachers they recruited, and of course the format of a gifted and talented residential high school. I also loved the fact that I would be part of the inaugural class and I was proud of Indiana for creating such a cutting-edge school.

Where did you go to college and what was your degree path?
I attended Ball State University for one year and then transferred to Smith College where I majored in history and government with an international relations focus. I had such a hard time choosing a major and a career! I was interested in everything! I thought a lot about working for international organizations like the United Nation or UNESO. I realized later that that was because I was supposed to be a writer. To be a writer, I do believe you need massive curiosity. Through the nonprofit I founded when I was 32 called Global Alliance of Artists, my interest in international relations is also being fulfilled. I still carry the notion, many will think naïve, that we can solve world problems, that we could have world peace.

What is your career history and current profession?
I moved back to Indiana after graduating and got a job in advertising and then later one in public relations. My employers were great people but I decided the profession was not a good fit. My father had died by then and I needed to do something dramatic to take some of the pain away. I was in touch with a Smith alum and so I moved to Los Angeles to work on a startup called Short Cinema Journal where I was an acquisitions editor for a new format at the time—DVDs. We collected short films from around the world as well as interviewed directors, musicians and artists. It was in LA that I took my first fiction writing class with a previous editor of the Paris Review and fell in love with creative writing.

I was also still writing non-fiction pieces. I published my first essay in Blue Jean Magazine when I was 21 and then went on to publish in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune among others. I decided to move to Prague for a year to get to know my Czech grandmother and also write my first novel. It was there that I began writing Mary’s Wings: A Novella which I published summer 2024.

I then moved to Chicago and got a job for a couple of years working as a project assistant for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. It was there that I met two of my writing mentors. Mary’s Wings is dedicated to one of them—Professor Farouk Mustafa.

I was accepted into a writing residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon and spent three months there finishing up my next book which was published titled Peter’s Moonlight Photography and Other Stories.

Around the same time, I founded a nonprofit called Global Alliance of Artists. I took a number of sociology and anthropology classes at Smith and learned a lot about social change. I believed, and still do, that artists can help solve some of our most challenging social and environment problems. I am working with a talented group of people now to rebuild GAA.

I eventually got a job as a special education assistant with Chicago Public Schools and continued writing before work. I went on to get a MA in Education from DePaul and eventually moved back to Indiana to do Indy Teach, an amazing educator program. I got my teaching license last summer and currently work as a first-grade teacher with Indianapolis Public Schools. I love that Indiana educated me and now I can help educate the children of Indiana.

I continue to write daily and am currently marketing Mary’s Wings and also finishing up a new novel.

What was your favorite class when you attended the Academy and why?
I loved Mr. Mark Watson’s classes! In fact, we are still good friends and he has been my mentor for the past 35 years! His classes were global, relevant and creative and his interest in his students supportive, encouraging and made you feel like whatever you did in the world or what problems you were having he was there for you to help you.

Fun fact about yourself:
I used to do gymnastics at the competitive level and at 50, can still do a handstand!

Book or movie recommendation?
Oh my gosh so many! I love ghost movies—the classic haunted house kind and also dramatic films set in other countries. I love The English Patient. I also love The Shawshank Redemption and you might think this is odd—but I love the Rocky series—especially Rocky IV. Who doesn’t love an underdog? In terms of books, anything by the American romantics—Thoreau, Emerson. I also admire Isabel Allende and Virginia Woolf—especially her diaries. If I could have dinner with anyone, it would be her. She was so ahead of her time and I admire her boldness.

Academy Note:
Be sure to check out Dina’s website at www.DinaSRabadi.com as well as her current book Mary’s Wings: A Novella, and her short story collection Peter’s Moonlight Photography and Other Stories.