Family and friends have always proclaimed that art, and creativity has always been a foundation in my life, even from a very young age. I was born on May 11, 1983 to a family who was broke, but very humble. My father spent most of his early days in America (yes my mother and father both immigrated from Israel) going from one convenient store to another. He worked for some, but ran many of his own unsuccessfully. Yet it's all he knew, and he never gave up trying. My mother who for the most of her life was sick  but also never gave up trying to be a mother to her kids. Her heart was filled with warmth and love for everyone that was touched by her life. She was very active in our community.

She ran a peace organization that often held events where the children of it's Arab members performed art. Usually poetry, chants, and songs. She evolved all of us, including my older sister Lina, and my older brother Warrad (yes his first name is the same as our last name. Both our family and my brother were named after my great grandfather -- Warrad).  It was working with my mother that I truly began exploring my love and talent for art. She was a poet., an excellent poet (it will be my goal in the future to translate her poetry from the Arabic language and post them on this site) but she also wrote songs, short stories and essays. She loved to sew. Not regular sewing. She didn't make shirts, quilts, pillow covers, or dresses. She made art. Yes, she did what Leonardo Da Vinci would do with paint, only she did this with yarn. Her last work of art before she past away on on February 6, 1992 was a portrait of Romeo and Juliet.

She wasn't the only source for my love and talent for art. My grandfather Jameal (on my father's side) was a chanter (these days, in America, they are called Rappers) and he was famous particularly for a 30 minuet chant that he recorded right before he died. To this day we still have that recording. And my father, have always tried to duplicate the chants manually (by chanting those famous chants himself). His goal/dream is to one day record those chants with his voice before he dies (just like his father).

Okay enough about your family...what about you?

 

Peace 2 the World -- Fareed Warrad 2009

 

Well, I was born in Denver, CO but for the most part of my life I grew up in St. Louis, MO. I have a vast variety of interests and talents, but in the beginning of my childhood music ruled. My mother told me many times that I was born "Singing" and not crying. I grew up on Bon Jovi and Def Leopard as well as Arabic acts. I had a passion for art a passion for music so much so that in 1997 I began writing my own music (albeit rap, but hey my grandfather rapped/chanted).

In my Freshman through Senior years of high school (I am proud to say that I attended Hazelwood West Junior and Senior High in Hazelwood, MO)  I started to dabble in writing other things, such as poetry, and short stories. I've wrote several poems and short stories for my school's literary magazine several were included and a few actually won prizes. Like in 1999 when my short story Sixteen Years of Misery won 1st place in my school's literary magazine. This was exciting for me. It was my first short story and I was only a freshman. I later converted that short story into a movie script and filmed it as a "school project" with other classmates and submitted it into a school film contest. It didn't win, but I was proud of the project either way.

In my junior and senior year I  evolved myself in my high school's magazine and yearbook clubs. I worked on the school's magazine during my junior year and on the year book during my senior year. During this time I also evolved myself with my school's concert choir and fine arts club. I participated in a few plays including my senior bash Still Standing, which was a play about how our play (A Pink Panther play) was canceled because of the events of September 11th, and how we not only dealt with that, but how we overcame it.

Also, during my sophomore and junior year in high school I took on the art of computers. It may not seem like art to others, but the way a computer functions, behaves, performs, calculates, and processes things is art. Not to mention "coding" is another form of writing, another form of language. I'm not currently at a level to write code, but that's one of my future goals. Through out high school, I spent a lot of time learning about computers, how they function, their operating system software's, the hardware, etc and in my senior year I took collage level courses in computers.

Shortly after graduation my family moved to Homosassa, FL, which is an hour away from Tampa and an hour away from Orlando. This move took place in 2003 and since then I have built and ran a semi-successful computer repair service company, known as Ignitia Solutions (now Ignitia is a service brand of my company called HSG Holdings, Inc). I've even went as far as dabbling with a mini-merger that didn't go quite as I expected it to, but I still was able to overcome those issues and learn a lot from it too.

Earlier this year I began reviewing a short story that I wrote during senior high. In fact it was the last short story I wrote in high school. It was called Keeping The Faith Alive. It's a story about a young Arab teen who was to deal with growing up as a Muslim, moving away from his family, and friends in St. Louis, MO, and and coping with the effects of September 11th on his family. Basically I stripped it down, re wrote it, made it longer, better, and more "grown up" than it was before. Originally it was eight chapters and 32 pages (8 1/2 X 11) and now it's thirty four chapters, 80,472 words, 361 pages (4.25" X 6.88"). Hopefully I can successfully get it published. I recently just signed with the WL Agency, a top notch literary agency, and we look forward to finding a major publisher.

Well, I basically told you everything that there is to know about me. If you still have questions. Just Ask Me.

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