George Anton Kiraz, Ph.D.
President

George is the President and co-founder of Gorgias Press. Born in Bethlehem, he immigrated to the United States and attended California State University, Northridge, where he obtained a degree in Engineering in 1990. He then became the first student to obtain the M.St. degree in Syriac Studies at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford in 1991. Wishing to combine his technical background with his passion for Syriac and Semitic languages, he joined the University of Cambridge where he obtained an M.Phil. in Computational Linguistics and a Ph.D. in the same. He wrote his thesis on computing the morphology of Arabic and Syriac.

In 1996, George became a research scientist at Bell Laboratories, NJ, where he worked on speech technology. In 2000, he was hired by Nuance Communications, a speech technology startup, to help establish and lead a New York branch of the company. This gave George tremendous experience in management, but was short lived due to the stock market crash of 2001.

Already a published author, George co-founded Gorgias Press along with his wife Christine in 2001. The press was announced to the public in the summer of 2001 at the Leiden Peshitta conference, and later to a larger public in November 2001 with 10 books in the Press’s catalog. Within a short period of time, the press grew at a rate of publishing 70 titles per year.

George is married to Christine and together they have two children, Tabetha Gabriella, Sebastian Kenoro and Lucian Nurono. In his free time (whatever is left of it), George directs Beth Mardutho, The Syriac Institute. His hobbies include collecting printed types, reading, and writing.

Christine Kiraz, Ph.D.
Vice President

Christine is the Vice President and co-founder of Gorgias Press. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from UCLA. Later, Christine worked in the pharmaceutical industry to return to graduate school where she obtained her M.S. in Chemistry from UCLA and then a Ph.D. from Rutgers University.

At Gorgias Press, Christine wears many hats. She is the Director of Marketing and in charge of Human Resources, as well as Customer Service. During the first year of the press, she designed book covers for over 100 books. She would love to go back to designing covers at some point but still remains involved in the design process.

Christine has always loved literature and read most of the European classics since an early age, first in Turkish then in English. She never quite fit in with the chemists as she used to read Shakespeare in between HPLC or NMR runs. She still likes to think that she has time to read and continues to collect books in various areas of literature, fiction and history of science especially alchemy. She loves to listen and dance to Syriac and Turkish folk music and is very happy that she finally got an iPod. She claims to have a reading knowledge of Syriac and was quite impressed with her ability to speak Syriac at a level of a three year old during her trip to Tur Abdin in her conversations with the angelic nuns of the Mor Gabriel Monastery in Turkey.

Christine is married to George and together they have Tabetha Gabriella, Sebastian Kenoro and Lucian Nurono.

Katie Stott, Ph.D
Senior Acquisitions Editor

Katie is the Production Editor at Gorgias Press. Being based in Australia, she also manages the acquisition of new titles from authors working in the southern part of the globe. Katie holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Queensland (Australia) and completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta (Canada). Her primary area of research interest is comparative ancient historiography, with a particular focus on the Hebrew Bible and classical literature, in which she has various publications. She also has a background in several ancient languages, including biblical Hebrew and Koiné Greek.

At the University of Alberta, she has been involved with the editing and publication of articles for the online open access Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, now available in print from Gorgias Press.

Beyond her pursuits in publishing and academia, Katie is a passionate foodie and intends one day to combine her interests in food and books and publish a cookbook of her own.

Hoda Mitwally
Editorial & Acquisitions Assistant

Hoda earned her B.A. in 2011 from Rutgers University, where she double majored in History and Middle Eastern Studies. She wrote her senior honors thesis on colloquial Egyptian Arabic poetry in the 1950s-60s. She plans to attend law school in the next few years and pursue a career in public interest advocacy. At Gorgias, Hoda handles books through the editorial stage, acquires new publications, and attends conferences. In her off-time, she enjoys reading, listening to music, and being an involved community member.

Phoebe Youhanna
Editorial Assistant

Phoebe was born in Cairo, where she lived for the first 8 years of her life. She then immigrated with her family to the US where she spent the remainder of her childhood in New Jersey. She graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in Political Science, Middle Eastern Studies and a minor in Music. Starting out as a cataloguer at Beth Mardutho, Phoebe divides her time between the realm of books and the world of editorial work at Gorgias. In her spare time this native Cairene likes to read, write, pick up melodies from the streets, sing, play the flute, and listen to classical as well as all other kinds of music. If you listen carefully in the office, you could often hear this proficient whistler whistle a favorite tune; she has been known, after all, to summon birds and other furry woodland creatures with her euphonic melodies!

Rachel Shields
Digitization Specialist

Rachel is currently studying at Rutgers University. At Gorgias Press she is the digitalization specialist, and is responsible for making books ready for reprints. She also gives a hand around the office with small projects that anyone may need a little extra help in completing. Her hobbies are playing soccer, reading books, and hanging out with her sisters.

Tony Fawzy
Technical Editor

Tony is the technical editor of Gorgias Press. He graduated from Rutgers University with a B.S. In Exercise Science in May 2011. He is currently studying for his Masters of Biomedical Science at UMDNJ. A hobbyist in graphic design, he is responsible for designing book covers, and preparing texts. During his down time, he loves to play soccer, video games and edit video.

Mary Ann Girgis
Customer Service Representative

Mary Ann graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in Political Science and Middle Eastern studies. This multi-cultural graduate has roots in Egypt, Armenia, and Syria. She plans on pursuing law after accomplishing some of her hare-brained bucket list adventures. In her spare time this hyper-active girl likes to go on long walks with her dog muffin, read books on her never-ending book list, pencil sketch, listen to English, Arabic and Japanese music, and most importantly spend time with her family. You can easily spot this girl singing along to the tune in her car while wearing her favorite color (rainbow - don’t ask questions) and entertaining the people she passes by. When she is not accidently entertaining the people she encounters, you will find her entertaining herself with the crazy situations she conjures up. It is not uncommon for her to randomly start laughing at something she day dreamed. She proclaims herself to be the Gorgias mascot because of her animated nature.

Omar Gamil
Software Developer

Omar is a certified Microsoft developer and holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. He is interested in problem solving, data structures, algorithms and automation, especially Java EE and Android development. He is an enthusiastic programmer/researcher and passionate about learning new technologies, and he looks forward to contributing to software industry with an innovative vision. In his free time, Omar likes to play the piano and acoustic guitar.

Jack Tannous, Ph.D.
Acquisitions Specialist

Jack Tannous was born and raised in Houston, Texas. For his BA, he attended the University of Texas, at Austin, where he majored in Philosophy, Arabic, Middle Eastern Studies and History. After UT, Jack attended Oxford, where he recieved an MPhil in Eastern Christian Studies and represented Gorgias Press at academic conferences in the UK. He is currently a graduate student at Princeton, working on a PhD in history, where he focuses on Late Antique, early Islamic, and Byzantine history in the Near East. Jack lives in Princeton, New Jersey and likes it there, though Texas will always be home. He is a graduate student and by definition does not have any free time, but he has been known to enjoy reading, going for walks, listening to music, just hanging out and talking with friends, and even dancing. Once upon a time, he used to play sports and lift weights as well.

Dirk Bakker, Ph.D. Candidate
European Conference Representative

Dirk has always had a fascination for languages in general, as well as for beautiful writing systems, typography, calligraphy and the like. As a child he used to design his own languages and scripts; and, admittedly, sometimes he still does. Studying linguistics seemed an obvious choice. He decided to go for something entirely uncommon, namely ancient Semitic languages, with a specialization in Syriac. Its language and literature (and its particularly aesthetic script) captivated him for good, and he decided to keep studying it alongside linguistics. A small research project in the Vatican library, where he had first-hand experience with ancient Syriac manuscripts, formed the basis of his master thesis. Currently Dirk is part of a PhD project at Leiden University, on the computer-assisted linguistic analysis of Syriac and other Aramaic texts.

Tabetha and Sebastian Kenoro
CEO and CFO of Harp of the Gazelle Imprint

Harp of the Gazelle Children Books is an imprint of Gorgias Press LLC. The name derives from its two cofounders: five-year old Tabetha (Aramaic for gazelle), CEO, and two-year old Kenoro (Syriac for harp), CFO. The publications of Harp of the Gazelle Children Books introduce children to the fascinating world of antiquity.

Tabetha, CEO, is a trilingual. She speaks Classical Syriac with her father, Turkish with her mother and English elsewhere. She loves to read books and to make books. Her favorite book manufacturing project is to get her father to print clip art images which she then cuts and pastes in books.

Sebastian Kenoro, CFO, is also growing in a multilingual environment. His favorite activity is to put coins in a piggy bank, only to take them out later—not too dissimilar from the press’s cash flow. He loves to flip books at a high speed making you think he reads them. He loves puzzles, trains, running and singing.

Flo Chart
Multitasking Specialist

Flo Chart was born and raised in 192.168.1.1.  Growing up in a multi-core and hyperthreading environment, she is fluent in HTML, SQL, C#, ASP.NET, and many other languages.  Flo is the hardest working employee of all of Gorgias Press as she works 24/7, only pausing for the occasional BSOD break.  She is responsible for not only overseeing the production of each and every Gorgias title; she also operates the software which makes the production possible.  Flo chart peruses entomology as a hobby, however often times she gets carried away and her fellow Gorgias staff must intervene with some debugging.  She likes to live by the motto: “010000010110111001100100001000000110100101100110001000000110111001101111 0111010000100000011011100110111101110111001011000010000001110111011010000 110010101101110001111110010001001011011”