Hadani Ditmars is a Vancouver-based writer and performer who works internationally. Her 2006 book Dancing in the No Fly Zone documents pre- and post-invasion culture in Iraq and includes several chapters on the Iraqi National Orchestra, whom she assisted by arranging for sheet music, violin strings, oboe reeds etc. to be brought in under sanctions.(She has also broadcasted the work of Iraqi composers on CBC radio.) Her next book, Between Two Rivers: a Journey Through the Ancient Heart of Iraq (for London’s IB Tauris), is a travelogue using ancient sites as a narrative device to tell the story of Iraqi culture today. Hadani is a past editor at New Internationalist and her work has been published in the Guardian, the Independent, the NY Post, the New Arab, Al-Jazeera, Sight and Sound, Walrus, Haaretz, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times, the Art Newspaper, Vogue, and Architectural Review. She is currently working on an apocalyptic cabaret for piano and voice, as well as arrangements of traditional Sephardic songs with Middle Eastern musicians, including a Syrian refugee violinist and an Iraqi oud player in exile.
