Jordan Elgrably is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and designer. He began work as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and International Herald Tribune while studying literature and communications in Paris, France, where he attended the American University of Paris (formerly ACP). Based in Europe throughout the 1980s, he wrote on arts, media and politics for the IHT, the Times, Libération, and many other European and U.S. periodicals. He returned to L.A. in 1990, where he continued working as a correspondent for such European publications as El País, Le Monde, Vogue España, Woman Magazine (Barcelona), Femme, El Europeo and Matador. He also contributed to numerous U.S. magazines and newspapers, among them the Los Angeles Times Magazine, San José Metro, Washington Post and others.
In the '80s and early '90s, he conducted a series of author interviews with such writers as James Baldwin, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Edmund White, Richard Ford, Amy Tan, Gilbert Sorrentino, Frank Chin, Barry Gifford and many others. Several of these interviews appeared in The Paris Review, Salmagundi and elsewhere. He has also interviewed a number of filmmakers over the years, among them Costas-Gavras, Pedro Almodóvar, Steven Soderbergh and Oliver Stone. From 1990 to 1996 he made his bread and butter as an entertainment journalist and editor.
In 1996 he cofounded Ivri-NASAWI, New Assn. of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International, with authors Ammiel Alcalay, Victor Perera, Ella Shohat and Ruth Behar, and was assisted by activists Joyce Maio and David Shasha. For five years, the organization produced cultural arts programming, with a focus on Sephardic and Middle Eastern perspectives, in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1999, Jordan founded Open Tent Middle East Coalition, in a further effort to bring Arab, Jewish and Christian communities together in the spirit of dialogue and reconciliation. Open Tent produced a number of programs through 2001, among them two editions of the "Middle East Film Fest: A Cultural Conversation," and the international conference, "The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future," which drew 3,000 attendees to a diverse range of panel discussions at UCLA, and featured an international roster of speakers.
In the summer of 2001, with three other Americans of Middle Eastern heritage, Jordan cofounded Levantine Cultural Center, with the mission to promote dialogue among the cultures of the Middle East through the literary, performing and visual arts, and to bring Americans a more mutli-faceted understanding of the Middle East. For more, click on Press.
Jordan has also pursued his lifelong interest in the law and justice, working as a legal editor for the Chase Law Group, where he founded the biweekly Criminal Defense Weekly, handled media communications for the firm and organized the public forum, "Racial Profiling After 9/11." He subsequently went over to the Los Angeles Daily Journal, where as legal editor he edited attorneys and judges' contributions to the practitioner and op-ed pages.
Over the years, Jordan has been a frequent radio guest on such stations as KPCC, KPFK, KCRW and KABC, speaking about his Middle East activism on behalf of Arab-Jewish reconciliation and inter-ethnic tolerance. He has also appeared on the BBC, Voice of America and a number of TV news programs. He has lectured or participated in panel discussions at Rutgers University (Writers and Attorneys on Civil Rights Post 9/11), Baylor University, UCLA, Brandeis-Bardin Insitute and at many community organizations, synagogues, churches and mosques. In addition to his legal, literary and journalistic activities, Jordan continues to produce public programs, including concerts, readings, salons and seminars.
In 2008 the World Arts and Cultures Foundation acknowledged Jordan's activism with a Local Hero Award, and he was featured in the L.A. Weekly's People of the Year issue.
