Ali's House Comic Strip

Marguerite Dabaie is a Palestinian-American, raised in San Francisco on dolmas, zataar and hummous but also on manga and cheesy movies. Deciding a change of pace was sorely needed, she moved cross-country to New York City. She likes the Big City but she's still a San Franciscan at heart. She attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and while there, won two grants to create The Hookah Girl, a series of graphic novels about her experiences growing up as an Arab-American. Ali's House is a playful, fictional look into that world.

Loosely modeling the characters of Ali's House to people and situations she had experienced within her Arab relations, she hopes to bridge gaps, repair bridges and bridge bridges. She also hopes to teach the world about mamoul and how it is quite possibly the best pastry ever made.

Her hobbies include ranting, playing video games, eating, taking long walks and still somehow finding time to keep watching cheesy movies.

She currently lives in Brooklyn with her inamorato and her awesome book collection.

Tom Hart has lived in Morocco and has spent years immersed in Arabic music, food and culture.

Tom Hart is the cartoonist and creator of "Hutch Owen", a series of graphic novels and comic strips, critically acclaimed by The Comics Journal, Time, Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. He was called by Understanding Comics creator Scott McCloud "One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade."

Hart grew up in Kingston, NY, where he played in the woods and copied (ok, traced) drawings from the newspaper's comic strip section. He attended School of Visual Arts (SVA) for cartooning, and has since lived in Seattle, WA; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Gainesville, FL, and Meknes, Morocco. He currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at SVA in Manhattan and other places around New York City.