Nasib Arida

Nasib Arida was a Syrian-born poet and writer of the Mahjar movement and a founding member of the New York Pen League. He immigrated to the United States in 1905 and worked in the textile industry. He founded al-Funoon, a literary magazine that published the works of many Mahjar poets, including Kahlil Gibran and Mikha'il Na'ima. He also co-founded the Pen League, an Arabic-language literary society, with Abd al-Masih Haddad in 1916. He wrote one collection of poems, Perplexed Spirits, which was published in 1946. He died the same year in Brooklyn, New York. He was married to Najeeba Haddad, the sister of fellow writers Abd al-Masih and Nadra Haddad. They adopted and raised their niece Nora after her mother's death. Nasib Arida was a prominent figure in the Arab-American literary scene and contributed to the development of modern Arabic poetry.