C.A. Suleiman is a writer, musician, and game developer. His father was born in Jerusalem, but fled Palestine as a child during the Nakba. (Nope, Suleiman is not a Turkish surname.) Half of his mother’s forebears came over on the Mayflower, and the other half greeted them when they arrived in New England. Some have said this makes him a mutt. C.A. Suleiman says it makes him an American.
Drawn to the arts at an early age, Suleiman started writing music at six and fiction at eight. When he was nine he wrote a short novel called The Legacy, which his teacher encouraged him to read to the other kids and their parents on Parents Day. It was a mystery story, and about halfway through the reading, the teacher stopped to poll everyone on who they thought dunnit.
At around the same age, Suleiman got his first introduction to gaming, courtesy of his mother, who furnished him with his first copy of Dungeons & Dragons. This began a lifelong interest not just in gaming, but also in fantasy, mythology, conceptual narrative, and imagination exercise. Gamemastering came next, and by high school, he was President of his school’s Gaming Club. Since then, he’s gone on to write, edit and/or develop scores of books for various hobby games.
Suleiman is a prolific songwriter, too, with over 90 viable songs in the can (and dozens more that will likely never see the light of day). Some appeared on the two albums he made with Toll Carom, the D.C.-area band he founded. Writing his style of music is faster than producing and releasing it, so he’s slowly working his way through the process of catching up to his own prodigious muse. The next offering up is the interstitial rock concept album, The Word. Suleiman is also the founder of Two Tribal, a sonic collaboration with his cousin Ramzy, of 47Soul fame.
Beyond his art, Suleiman loves animals and especially Big Cats, on whom he has over time accidentally become something of a subject matter expert. He’s worked to be active in Big Cat rescue, preservation, and repopulation, and he does not regard Big Cat extinction as inexorable. Humans are responsible for the loss of habitat and numbers, and humans can still make it right.
In addition to his fiction, music, game design, and activism, Suleiman also writes online articles that tend to cover the intersection of popular culture and sociopolitical policy.
Apart from brief stints elsewhere, Suleiman has been a denizen of the DMV since childhood. (No, he doesn’t live at the Department of Motor Vehicles, though it certainly feels that way to anyone who’s ever had to wait in line there; the “DMV” is what locals call the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area.) Despite his city’s many follies, foibles, and frauds, he’s still mostly a fan.