Reza Aslan

Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer

An internationally acclaimed writer and Middle East expert, Aslan holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. His first book is the International Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age), as well as editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities.

Aslan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues; Abraham’s Vision, an educational, conflict transformation organization for Israeli and Palestinian youths; PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world; and the Levantine Cultural Center, which builds bridges between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world through the arts. Aslan served on the board of the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Selection Committee from 2008-2009.

Aslan appears regularly on television and radio, including the Daily Show with John Stewart, the Colbert Report, CNN’s AC 360, Rachel Maddow, NPR, & Real Time with Bill Maher. Aslan lives in Los Angeles where he is penning his first script and his fourth book and where he serves as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.