Since 2014, Daesh (ISIS) has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of northern Iraq, sowing destruction, killing those who won’t convert to Islam,
and enslaving young girls and women.

Oakland University Professor Dunya Mikhail will tell the harrowing stories of several women who managed to escape the clutches of Daesh. The stories are detailed in her new book, The Beekeeper.

Mikhail extensively interviewed the women featured in her book. The women lost their families and loved ones, were repeatedly sold, raped, psychologically tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper, who uses his knowledge of the local terrain, along with a wide network of transporters, helpers, and former cigarette smugglers, to bring these women, one by one, through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, back into safety. 

A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, Mikhail was born in Iraq and came to the US thirty years later. An author and poet, her novel The Beekeeper went on to earn critical acclaim. She has also won prestigious awards such as the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing, the Knights Foundation grant and the Kresge Fellowship.