A Woman is a School

A Woman is a School is the first memoir and cultural anthropological book by Slow Factory founder, Céline Semaan. 

As a war-survivor and child refugee sharing endangered and discredited ancestral knowledge of the Global South, particularly tales from Lebanon from 1948 to 2023-the book follows the tradition of the hakawati, the storytellers of the Levant. Holding Indigenous knowledge and wisdom, Céline Semaan, a hakawati herself, documents what she has witnessed throughout her life and the lives of her family members, sharing her upbringing and cultures of resistance.

Céline Semaan is a Lebanese-Canadian designer, writer, speaker, and advocate working at the intersection of environmental and social justice. She speaks four languages, is a designer, writer, educator, strategist and mother.

Semaan is the founder of Slow Factory, a 501c3 an award-winning organization addressing the intersecting crises of climate justice and social inequity — filling the gap for climate adaptation and preparedness, building community power through open education, narrative change and regenerative design. As a part of this work, Slow Factory produces a conference series promoting sustainability literacy called Study Hall, the first science-driven incubator in fashion called One X One, as well as a material science lab focusing on waste to resource new materials.