Danny Ramadan was born in Damascus to a conservative Muslim family, and when he came out to his father at seventeen, he was forced to leave home. In the years that followed he faced relentless harassment and a homophobic attack that left him hospitalized — all for the simple crime of being gay.
When the war came, he fled Syria as a refugee, joining the migration of millions who left everything behind. He was one of the "lucky" ones who reached safety — but as Danny is quick to say, arriving in Canada was not the end of a fairy tale. It was the beginning of a long, honest reckoning with everything he had lost and everything he still had to build.
He built it anyway. Over the years, Danny Ramadan became an internationally celebrated author — his acclaimed novel The Clothesline Swing and his children's books carry queer and refugee stories into the world with tenderness and defiance. He writes, and speaks, about the reality of the LGBTQ refugee experience: the trauma that doesn't vanish at the airport, and the resilience that does.
His journey says this: home is not a passport. Home is what you rebuild, on your own terms, with your whole self.
