Live Reading & Discussion with Mona Kareem

6 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020

Live Reading & Discussion with Mona Kareem

Free, livestreamed on Facebook
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Join AANM artist-in-residence Mona Kareem for a live reading from her poetry collection Crossover, and discussion with AANM director Dr. Diana Abouali.

Throughout her residency, taking place remotely, Kareem is finalizing Crossover, a poetry collection that touches on themes particular to Arab experience/s in the United States: the loss or gain of language, the weight of a marked body passing through airports, the lingua of immigration and bureaucratic violence, and the fetishization of Arab sexuality in visual culture and colonial imaginary. The poems cross a range of narratives, working beyond the typical family-story, as many of us have arrived alone to this continent. They explore what this loneliness entails, especially for the bilingual artist.

Mona Kareem is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Femme Ghosts (Publication Studio, 2019), a trilingual chapbook. Her work has been translated into nine languages and published in anthologies and periodicals, including Brooklyn Rail, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ambit, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, PEN English, Modern Poetry in Translation, Two Lines and Specimen. She has held fellowships with Poetry International, BANFF Center, Norwich Center and Forum Transregionale Studien. Kareem has been a featured writer at festivals and conferences in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Seoul, Copenhagen and across the United States. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from SUNY Binghamton, and has taught at SUNY Binghamton, Rutgers, Bronx Community College and the University of Maryland.

Related event: Aug. 30: Virtual Poetry Workshop with Mona Kareem