Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉

@keychanged

Writer. Syrian, Mvskoke, genderplural. I love cartoons. ARMS EMBARGO NOW 2026 Mass Cultural Council Grantee in Literature 2024 NEA Fellow in Creative Writing Cover image from my novel-in-progress (excerpt at Mizna). Pic of me 📷: RWB

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Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· 6d

Laura Harjo, Spiral to the Stars: "I do not need a tribal government to indicate whether I am a citizen. I do not need my community to accept me, embrace me, or recognize me; I carry a Mvskoke belief system wherever I go, and that is why it makes no difference to me who recognizes me as Indigenous."

In reflecting on Mvskoke place and community from my subject position as a Mvskoke female, I already possess an embodied Mvskoke belief system, which may not look like that of other Mvskoke females; however, no one, no entity, and no law can alienate me from my Mvskoke sense of self—and as such, neither can other Mvskoke people be alienated from their senses of self and who they are. I do not need a tribal government to indicate whether I am a citizen. I do not need my community to accept me, embrace me, or recognize me; I carry a Mvskoke belief system wherever I go, and that is why it makes no difference to me who recognizes me as Indigenous. Both the strength of my ancestors and my own refusal to allow others to impose settler colonial and genocidal values as a mode of erasure are embodied forms of power that are activated by felt knowledge. Remembering the relatives and their sacrifices is another pivot point of power and agency. A powerful form of felt knowledge that we often hear Indigenous groups draw upon is the urge to remember the sacrifices of our relatives so that we carry ourselves with gratitude and build upon what they have left us.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jul 5

I literally started to cry when I saw this option to register for my local library's summer reading program. There are more than three options. Non-conforming is an inclusive category. This shouldn't be amazing. But it is. #gender-nonconforming

Screenshot of a dialogue box. Text reads:
What is your gender?
Please choose a gender
Female
Male
Non-binary
Non-conforming
Prefer not to respond

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· May 21

Couldn't be happier to have the first glimpse at my in-progress novel, Conjoined States, at @miznaarabart.bsky.social! Go read the full excerpt and check out the rest of the Tongues Untethered folio! mizna.org/mizna-online...

The following excerpt is part of the Mizna Online digital curation, Tongues Untethered: Cross-Cultural Writing and Identity Beyond Language. We encourage you to read this piece alongside other works in the folio.

Wahmi by Key K. Bird

Mirages are the perfect tool to counter knowledge brokers. Appearing online like a charm at the moment Know Bros needed a lead, mirages offered everything data chasers prayed for on their knees at night: insider intel, state secrets, and reasonably reliable rumors. Mirages promised the impossible, distracted Know Bros by feeding and misleading, granting them their most selfish wish: all the data they could ever ask for. Flooding data warehouses with invalid, outdated details, the agents behind the mirage used the storm to hide their tracks while they searched the brokerage for high-end assets: the names of investors who avoided paying taxes in one state by buying property in another, real estate developers who built state prisons that charged a nightly rate, and donors who bankrolled junior police academies in exchange for easy tax breaks. Once the agents had these winners’ names, they vanished along with the sand. And like real mirages, proving they’d ever existed was a pipe dream. Mirages fit the space where trust rubbed shoulders with belief. That’s why Rahmi Naifeh chose Wahmi as her codename. Close enough to her first name to have its own magnetic pull, wahmi winked at Rahmi like an Arabic abracadabra. Among other things, in Araby, wahmi means mirage.

Key K. Bird stands in front of a theatrical backdrop that shows a painted scene of a tree in a field with a curtain at its edge. Key wears a green keffiyeh, a mask embroidered with Palestinian tatreez, a brown blazer, vest, shirt, and pants. Their dark hair is curly and short. They face the viewer with a hand in their pocket. Text besides Key reads: "Wahmi by Key K. Bird, Mizna Online, Tongues Untethered." Mizna's colophon appears in the right corner in Arabic.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 27

BOSTON: I'm reading Saturday, May 2 in the Common at 5pm with some of my favorite people: Randolph Bird, John Bonanni, Joey Gould, and Dominick Knowles! We're reading original poems, essays, and stories as part of Fall of Freedom "to amplify all struggles against repression and state violence."

Light emanates from a torch held aloft by a figure's hand. Text reads: Unauthorized. Boston Common reading. May 2, 2026. 5pm. Fall of Freedom. Art Matters. Courage is contagious. FallOfFreedom.com

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 23

Dear reader, NOBODY ASKED ME. So, I gave all-clear on the proof that said "750,000" And what went to press, in print, which I didn't even notice before today, is: "seventy-five hundred thousand"

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 20

Next Sunday, come hear me read at Boston City Hall with three of my favorite artists: George Abraham, Feda Eid, and Jess Rizkallah. April 26, 3pm at Civic Pavilion. Hosted by @boston.gov Organized by Jess Rizkallah and Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah to celebrate #ArabAmericanHeritageMonth

Majlis: Poetry, Multimedia, and Conversation. A free event on April 26 at 3pm at Civic Pavilion, 5 Congress Street in Boston, celebrating National Arab-American Heritage Month and National Poetry Month. Feda Eid wears a traditional Lebanese headdress, Key K. Bird wears a face mask embroidered with Palestinian tatreez, Jess Rizkallah wears a keffiyeh, and George Abraham sits in front of a bookshelf.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 20

BOSTON: Want to celebrate #ArabAmericanHeritageMonth and get a head start on #IndieBookstoreDay? Meet me at Connexion this Wednesday, April 22 at 7pm when I'll be in conversation with Deema K. Shehabi about her book, Water is Water! Can't wait to see you there! Hosted by @allshewrotebks.bsky.social

Flyer for Water to Water Book Talk with Deema K. Shehabi and Key K. Bird. April 22, 7:00pm, 149 Broadway, Somerville. Presented by All She Wrote Books, Palestine Youth Movement, Somerville for Palestine, and JVP Boston.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jan 23

I'll be talking about narrative spirals, and reading excerpts from my novel in progress, Conjoined States. Here's a peek at a map that more or less covers the table of contents. Hope to see you tomorrow!

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jul 30

Vile but unsurprising. In Oct 23, she captioned an IG post ”Terror from the skies + Israeli flag.” The post showed children looking at the sky in fear. She only deleted it after people mocked her b/c the kids were in Palestine. In Jan 25, she compared the fires in Palisades to Gaza. She’s a ghoul.

Screenshot of Curtis’s IG post from Oct 2023

Screenshot of article from the New Arab describing Curtis’s comments about the Palisades fire

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· May 19

Wajib, which has some of the most beautifully composed shots of Palestine, and The Wanted 18, which combines live action and claymation to tell the story of 18 cows in the West Bank and the policies that Pali families had to fight to keep them

Movie poster for Wajib, which shows the film’s title in Arabic and English

Poster for the movie The Wanted 18, which shows a claymation IOF soldier looking at a wanted poster of a cow

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· May 8

Just 2 days until janan alexandra, Sarah Cypher, Elina Katrin, and I talk about writing multilingual texts for Mass Poetry! The event is free and virtual, and most important, janan, Sarah, and Elina are brilliant and delightful. Saturday night at 7pm EST on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

Promo image for a panel at Mass Poetry Festival entitled "Tongues Untethered: Cross-Cultural Writing and Identity Beyond Language." Circular headshots of janan alexandra, Key K. Bird, Sarah Cypher, and Elina Katrin are complemented by mandalas. janan, Key, Sarah, and Elina have dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. janan carries flowers in her arms and smiles at the viewer. Key wears a keffiyeh and a face mask decorated with traditional Palestinian tatreez embroidery and faces the viewer. Sarah is surrounded by abstract shapes and smiles at the viewer. Elina wears sunglasses and smiles at the viewer.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 7

In less than two weeks, I’ll be at the closing event at UNH’s Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival! I’m so excited to be among these poets and artists. April 19, 9pm at Freedom Cafe in Durham—see you there! learnforlife.unh.edu/portal/event...

Line drawings of people wearing floral headresses decorate the promo flyer for Rewilding, an event featuring Key K. Bird, John Bonnani, Feda Eid, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, Joey Gould, Krysten Hill, Colin O’Day, and Jess Rizkallah.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jan 9

I still remember my required reading lists for AP English. I can't go look them up (I grew up before everything was digitized), but I can still rattle off the titles because I loved half and hated half. Guess which was which. (Also, yes, they were all by dudes... I know...)

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 by George Orwell
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
+ Huck Finn, not req. but rec. reading

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jan 8

Grateful to the editors at @eldiagram.bsky.social for publishing my essay "Taking the Romance Out of Necromancy," which is about classic movie monsters, the mistreatment of queer and trans Arabs, and cultural appropriation, among other things. thediagram.com/24_4/bird.html

A screenshot of the cover image of Diagram 24.4 and the title and byline for Key K. Bird's essay "Taking the Romance Out of Necromancy"

An excerpt from Key K. Bird's essay "Taking the Romance Out of Necromancy"

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Jan 6

Let This Radicalize You is definitely on my TBR pile for this year. The last book I read in 2024 (Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad) alongside the first book I read in 2025 (Birthright by George Abraham).

Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad and Birthright by George Abraham are on a white cloth. Between them is a bookmark with a pomegranate and rose design.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Apr 6

Post a selfie that looks good in black and white.

Key, a genderqueer multiracial Arab with pale skin and dark curly hair, wears a keffiyeh, N95 mask, and sunglasses.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Dec 2

Trans people, reskeet with a nice photo of yourself. ♥️🗝️

A photo of Key K. Bird mimicking the post of a nearby statue of a humanoid figure with a bird head.

Key K. Bird 🗝️🦉@keychanged· Dec 2

My essay "I Can't Tell" came out about a year ago as part of the "We Are More" column at @therumpus.bsky.social, a place for SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) writers to tell our stories our way. Heaps of thanks to Michelle Zamanian for her keen editing skills. therumpus.net/2022/11/16/w...