Writer, Editor, and Storyteller
Award-winning writer, editor, multimedia producer, and storyteller. For over twelve years, Aiello produced and directed multimedia and written content from concept through development for PEN America across digital and print platforms, including websites, social media, magazines, and films. He now consults for writers, publishers, and arts and literary organizations.
Aiello and his collaborative partner, Mansoor Adayfi are Sundance Fellows in the Episodic Lab: Pilot to Series.
Recent Projects
"In this landmark work, Mansoor Adayfi gives us a guided tour through the nightmarish landscape of Guantánamo…Let us hope that Don't Forget Us Here will spark a long overdue reckoning with the horrors of Guantánamo and its many victims."
—Ron Chernow, bestselling author of Grant and Hamilton
“An incredible story! I am grateful to this joyously heartbreaking book for reminding me of what it means to be not just human, but humane.”
—Azar Nafisi, bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
"Don't Forget Us Here is a profoundly moving and immensely important tribute to the intelligence, resilience and humanity with which its author, Mansoor Adayfi, survived fourteen years as a detainee in the notorious Guantánamo prison camp."
—Francine Prose, New York Times bestselling author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
“A riveting, illuminating account of Guantánamo from a Muslim perspective.”
—Jonathan Hansen, author of Guantánamo: An American History
Preorder Don’t Forget Us Here in print, ebook, and audiobook at HachetteBooks.com
PEN America at 100
A sucker for history and archives, I wrote and directed this short film reflecting on and celebrating PEN America’s evolution over the past 100 into one of the world’s foremost literary and human rights organizations. Produced in collaboration with Hiker Creative Agency.
From Guantánamo, with Love
Shrouded in secrecy, Guantánamo occupies a mythic place in our collective psyche, a physical manifestation of America’s struggle to reconcile being both victim and perpetrator of gross atrocities. From Guantánamo, With Love is an hour-long historical drama based on true stories. The show lets us experience the stories of men who battled the world’s most powerful country to end torture, while struggling to claw back their humanity, and win their freedom. In a world peddling lies as truth, the show asks: What really defines our villains and heroes, and are our heroes the ones who betrayed us the most? Huge thanks to the Episodic TV team at Sundance for believing in us and this project.
GUANTÁNAMO VOICES AND THE NIB
Graphic narratives are a great way to tell important stories that often can’t be told with words alone. Mansoor Adayfi’s stories from Guantánamo are so full of humanity and life they were ripe for medium. Sarah Mirk, Matt Bors, Cora Currier, and illustrator Kane Lynch helped bring these stories to life for publication in The Nib and Guantánamo Voices.
Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo
In the fall of 2018 a friend introduced me to Mansoor Adayfi through his attorney, Beth Jacob. He’d written a book while detained at Guantánamo and needed some help putting it all together to get out to publishers and agents. What I read were the most incredible stories about life in the world’s most infamous prison. I ended up getting involved in the project and so began one of the most incredible collaborations of my life. Represented by Julia Eagleton at Janklow & Nesbit, we sold the book in the winter of 2020 to Sam Raim at Hachette to be published as DON’T FORGET US HERE: LOST AND FOUND AT GUANTÁNAMO in the fall of 2021.
BARD PRISON INITIATIVE WEBSITE
Launched in May 2018, the Bard Prison Initiative website is a complete reimagining of how the organization communicates its mission. Using video, dynamic infographics, and narrative-rich text, we created a compelling story about innovating education on a broad scale, while introducing the inspiring stories of students redefining success.
PEN America Digital Archives
Launched in July 2017, the PEN America Digital Archive captures more than 50 years of cultural programming at the intersection of literature and freedom of expression advocacy. Developed in collaboration with Princeton University with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the digital archive makes available long-inaccessible but valuable public and private programming featuring the world’s foremost writers, intellectuals, and artists in candid and often heated discourse about the most relevant cultural and political issues of our times.
Glossolalia Issue 3: We agree
on Nothing
Issue 3 landed in bookstores across the country in May. More than two years in the making, "We Agree on Nothing" was edited by Canaan Morse and Eleanor Goodman and features gorgeous narrative center fold maps (also cover art) and new translations of fantasy, science fiction, poetry, and micro nonfiction from mainland China with translations by Jeremy Tiang, Andrea Lingenfelter, Jennifer Feeley, Jeremy Tiang, and Ken Liu. You can purchase copies here.
Soon after the November elections, I emailed the editors of the Illustrated PEN (Rob Kirby, MariNaomi, and Meg Lemke) to ask if we could commission a series of graphic narratives to amplify the voices and stories of communities whose concerns and lives may be most at risk under the new administration. The answer was a resounding, "Hell Yeah!" Our hope is that the stories created for this series will help empower and inspire people to stand up and speak out and to begin to repair what’s been so thoroughly broken.
Leonard Cohen's "Democracy"
Every now and then I need to stop and take in the work I'm a part of at the intersection of art and free expression. Most recently, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer recorded a new arrangement of Leonard Cohen's "Democracy." I asked David Mack to create illustrations for the song and Olga Nunes to bring it all together in an animated video. The final piece is at once heartbreaking and hopeful (knowing we have a fight ahead), an accurate reflection of where we are today. We used the video at PEN America for our most successful end-of-year giving campaign that helped break fundraising records and broaden PEN America's audience.