Mansoor Adayfi

Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, advocate, and former Guantánamo Bay detainee, held for over 14 years without charges as an enemy combatant. Adayfi was released to Serbia in 2016, where he struggles to make a new life for himself and to shed thedesignation of a suspected terrorist. He has published several New York Times pieces, including a Modern Love column. He wrote the introduction to the 2017-2018 exhibit, Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay, and contributed to the scholarly volume, Witnessing Torture. His graphic narrative, Caged Lives was published by The Nib and is included in the anthology Guantanamo Voices. He participated in the creation of the award-winning radio documentary The Art of Now: Guantánamo for BBC radio and the CBC podcast Love Me, which aired on NPR's Snap Judgment. Regularly interviewed by international news media about his experiences at Guantánamo and life after, he was also featured in the PBS Frontline episode Out of Gitmo. In 2019, he won the Richard J. Margolis Award for nonfiction writers of social justice journalism. He is also one of the Sundance Institute's 2020 Episodic Lab Fellows, through which he is working to bring Don't Forget Us Here to television.

Antonio Aiello is a writer, editor, and storyteller working in print, digital, and broadcast formats. He worked closely with Mansoor to help develop the manuscripts written at Guantánamo into Don't Forget Us Here. Together, they are working to develop a TV show inspired by the book as Fellows in the Sundance Institute's prestigious Episodic Lab.