Beyond the Crescent Sky

A. L. Sowards is the author of more than a dozen historical novels, with settings spanning the globe from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Her stories have earned multiple awards and other honors. Sowards grew up in Washington State, spent a few decades in Utah, and now resides in Alaska with her husband, three children, and ever-growing library. She likes hiking and swimming, usually manages to keep up with the laundry, and loves it when someone else cooks dinner.

Lameece Issaq is an actor, writer, and cofounder/former artistic director of the Obie Award-winning company Noor Theatre. Lameece has narrated over eighty books, most recently The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, for which she won an AudioFile Earphones Award. She has appeared in several regional and off-Broadway productions, including The Fever Chart and Stuff Happens (Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Ensemble) at the Public Theatre, The Black Eyed at New York Theatre Workshop, and Noura at The Old Globe, among several others. She's written various short plays produced in The New York Arab-American Comedy Festival; as well as short plays Noor & Hadi Go to Hogwarts (Theater Breaking Through Barriers, Golden Thread Theater); Orb Weaver (24/6) and Nooha's List, part of the compilation play Motherhood Outloud (Hartford Stage, The Geffen and Primary Stages). Her full-length play Food and Fadwa (2011 recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award) premiered off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in a production she coproduced and starred in, and in which Variety magazine praised her performance as "stunning." Food and Fadwa was a part of the Arab Voices Festival in both Abu Dhabi and Beirut and was published in the anthology "Contemporary Plays By Women of Color," second edition. She cowrote the feature film Abe, directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. She starred in her most recent play, A Good Day to Me Not to You, which premiered off-Broadway at the Connelly Theater in 2023 and was produced by Waterwell and Plate Spinner Productions. The play was developed at Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, The Cape Cod Theatre Project, Noor Theatre, and Theatre Aspen's Solo Flights Festival. A 2016 NYFA Finalist in Playwriting/Screenwriting, Lameece is a member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA.