Chaker Khazaal

He is a Palestinian-Canadian reporter, speaker, former Editor-in-Chief of StepFeed and YallaFeed, Huffington Post contributor, and author of Tale of Tala (2017) and the Confessions of a War Child trilogy (2013-2015).

Born in 1987 as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, Chaker grew up in Bourj El Barajneh camp in Beirut. At a young age, he participated in several local plays and starred in the Palestinian film Sugar of Jaffa. He later immigrated to Canada. Being one of four recipients of the Global Leader of Tomorrow Award, Chaker studied at York University in Toronto and graduated in 2009 with a B.A. in International Development Studies.

He then worked as a public speaker and web-shows host before publishing his first novel, Confessions of a War Child (Part One) in March 2013, later followed by part two (subtitled Lia) published in 2014 and part three (subtitled Sahara) released in 2015.

Chaker is an advocate for refugees and aspiring young writers. A savvy communicator, he has spoken at a number of platforms including United Nations Headquarters (New York), HuffPost Live, Google (San Francisco), msnbc’s Road Map show, International Youth Conference (Bahrain), Thomson Reuters Foundation (London), the launch of the 8th Arab Youth Survey (Dubai), Harvard Arab World Conference 2017 (Jordan), MarComms Conference, Facebook (Dubai), United Nations Alliance of  Civilizations conference in Cairo (2017), World Government Summit in Dubai (2018), UK House of Commons (2018), and the Emirates Literature Festival.

In 2015, Esquire Middle East named him Man of the Year; and in 2016, Chaker was ranked first by Arabian Business Magazine in the 100 Most Powerful Arabs Under 40. In the same year, he was presented with the Mentor Arabia Award by Queen Silvia of Sweden and Prince Turki Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. In December 2016, Chaker was awarded the Global Trailblazer together with Arianna Huffington by New York based NGO Bridges of Understanding.

His new book — Tale of Tala — presents the journey of a Palestinian refugee from a camp in Lebanon to human traffickers in Europe where she becomes a prostitute. Tale of Tala is a love story that is a descriptive narrative of the plight of refugees today, inspired by interviews conducted by Khazaal during his reporting trip to Europe and the Middle East in 2015. This romantic thriller was released in September 2017 and already toured 29 cities; the novel also earned Amazon Best Sellers status among the Top 10 Novels of March and April 2018.

Speaker Details
  • Job Title
    Author, Reporter and Speaker
  • Company
Speaker Details
  • Job Title
    Author, Reporter and Speaker
  • Company