Top Contributors to Shira.net

Although much of the material on Shira.net was written by me (Shira), I have been blessed to receive contributions from many other friends of the dance over the years! If you have read an article by one of my contributors that you enjoyed very much, perhaps you'd like to read other pieces by the same person.

On this page, I've highlighted those individuals who have contributed 10 or more distinct items to Shira.net:

	Panayiota Bakis. Panayiota is an artist of Anatolian Greek heritage, with a passion for her culture. She has contributed over 270 items to this web site. Although most of those are translations of songs from Greek to English, she also has written articles about Greek dance, music, and culture.
	Priscilla Adum. Priscilla is a dancer of Lebanese heritage who shares information about Arab culture, with a special focus on historical information about Golden Era Egyptian dancers. She has contributed nearly 200 articles to this site.
	Tahseen Alkoudsi. Tahseen has contributed 100 Arabic-language translations to this web site.
	Saqra. Saqra is an award-winning performer and popular workshop instructor who offers some of her secrets here in the form of more than 70 dance tips.
	Dina Lydia. Also known as The Costume Goddess. In the past, she used to write a regular column titled "Ask the Costume Goddess". Since publishing her books, she has retired the column, but she graciously allows me to leave the archive online. Dina has written more than 50 costuming-related articles which appear on this site!
	Arabella. Based on Toronto, Canada, Arabella has written on a variety of different topics: analyzing dance technique, offering opinions, exploring Arabic culture, and more. Arabella has contributed more than 10 of the articles on this site.
	Dr. George Dmitri Sawa. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Dr. Sawa has over 50 years of experience in Arabic music performance, history and theory. He has contributed articles about tarab, translations of Medieval manuscripts, and Arabic-language song translations.
	Yasmina Ramzy. Yasmina has contributed more than 10 translations for songs with Arabic lyrics to this web site. She is based in Toronto, Canada.

Throughout my web site, you'll find contributions by many other people, too, including artwork and poetry, fun & frolic, opinion pieces, and more. On this page, I'm just highlighting those who have contributed the largest number of items.

Would You Like to
Contribute Something to Shira.net?

I welcome contributions from my readers, and if you're interested in having your own work featured on Shira.net, I'd love to hear from you!

Types Of Articles Desired

These are the types of articles I'm especially interested in receiving, but if you have something that doesn't fall into any of these categories, contact me and ask me whether it might fit:

• Any kind of how-to's, advice, or tips. Could include costume ideas, how to do certain dance moves, how to handle something in the business side of dancing such as running an event, etc.
• Song translations. I welcome translations of songs from Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, and Armenian to English.
• Artwork, opinion pieces, poetry, fiction, essays, journals. Our dance is wonderful for both the body and spirit!

What I Don't Need

• Product reviews
• Event reviews
• Photo galleries

I might consider publishing an interview, but only if the dancer being interviewed is of worldwide importance (such as Fifi Abdo, Soheir Zaki, Nagwa Fouad, etc.) and only if the questions asked by the interviewer have true substance. I'm not very interested in fluff pieces - the interview would need to provide insight on the historical and cultural factors that help readers understand why this person became important to our dance form.

Copyright Issues

I expect you to have the legal rights to send me whatever you're sending. In other words, please don't copy a song translation out of the liner notes of a CD or songbook and send it to me, because legally I can't use that! Please don't trace someone else's photo or drawing and claim it as your own artwork.

I expect you to grant me permission to feature the article on my web site into perpetuity. In other words, I want you to grant me the right to keep it on my web site forever.

If you send me one or more photos to illustrate your article or to publish alongside your biography, you must get permission from the photographer to have his/her photos be published on my web site. You also must ask the photographer whether s/he wants her/his name published as a photo credit, and if so, provide me with the photographer's name. (Most professional photographers expect it.)

If you have written an article that has previously been published in one of the print Middle Eastern magazines or one of the e-zines (web-based magazines), I'm still willing to consider it for my site. Please double-check the magazine's copyright policy - typically, they expect you to grant them "first serial rights", which means that they get to print it before anyone else does. But most of the magazines, once they have already published it, allow you the right to offer it to me for publication on my web site. But please check on this before you offer me the piece. When sending it to me, please identify the magazine that originally published it, along with the issue number and cover date.

Pay

I regret that I cannot offer cash payments to contributors to my web site. I incur considerable costs in paying for the hosting of this web site, and the money I collect from the Amazon affiliate links don't even cover that.

The best I can offer you is attribution / visibility. If you contribute a full-length article, poem, or a piece of artwork, I can include your photo and biographical information at the bottom of the page. If you have your own web site, we can also exchange links.

Copyright Notice

This entire web site is copyrighted. All rights reserved.

All articles, images, forms, scripts, directories, and product reviews on this web site are the property of Shira unless a different author/artist is identified. Material from this web site may not be posted on any other web site unless permission is first obtained from Shira.

Academic papers for school purposes may use information from this site only if the paper properly identifies the original article on Shira.net using appropriate citations (footnotes, end notes, etc.) and bibliography. Consult your instructor for instructions on how to do this.

If you wish to translate articles from Shira.net into a language other than English, Shira will be happy to post your translation here on Shira.net along with a note identifying you as the translator. This could include your photo and biography if you want it to. Contact Shira for more information. You may not post translations of Shira's articles on anybody else's web site, not even your own.

If you are a teacher, performer, or student of Middle Eastern dance, you may link directly to any page on this web site from either your blog or your own web site without first obtaining Shira's permission. Click here for link buttons and other information on how to link.