Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-01 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union Parkway North, 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, 97201, United States
LIGHT IN GAZA: WRITINGS BORN OF FIRE
book tour
Edited by our friends at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Light in Gaza brings together sixteen essays and poems by twelve Palestinian writers. The book includes political essays, personal narratives, economic analysis, and poetry. It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Writer and contributor Yousef M. Aljamal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Nusierat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip will be the featured speaker.

Sunday, October 1, 2-3:30 p.m.
Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union Parkway North, Room 101
1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, 97201
Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER)-Portland State presents
Gaza’s Role in the Palestine National Movement

Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-02 19:00 - 21:30 | New Traditions, 300 5th Ave SW, Olympia, WA, 98501, United States
LIGHT IN GAZA: WRITINGS BORN OF FIRE
book tour
Edited by our friends at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Light in Gaza brings together sixteen essays and poems by twelve Palestinian writers. The book includes political essays, personal narratives, economic analysis, and poetry. It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Writer and contributor Yousef M. Aljamal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Nusierat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip will be the featured speaker.

Monday, October 2, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
New Traditions Fair Trade
300 5th Ave SW, Olympia, WA 98501
The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice & JVP-Tacoma present
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, with speakers Yousef Aljamal and Jennifer Bing

Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Tacoma Community College, 6501 South 19th Street, Tacoma, WA, 98466, United States
LIGHT IN GAZA: WRITINGS BORN OF FIRE
book tour
Edited by our friends at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Light in Gaza brings together sixteen essays and poems by twelve Palestinian writers. The book includes political essays, personal narratives, economic analysis, and poetry. It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Writer and contributor Yousef M. Aljamal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Nusierat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip will be the featured speaker.

Tuesday, October 3, 12:00 p.m.
Tacoma Community College
6501 South 19th Street, Tacoma, WA 98466. Building 11, Room 119
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)-Tacoma & the Rachel Corrie Foundation present
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, with speakers Yousef Aljamal and Jennifer Bing

Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Seattle Pacific University, 3307 3rd Ave W, Seattle, WA, 98119, United States
LIGHT IN GAZA: WRITINGS BORN OF FIRE
book tour
Edited by our friends at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Light in Gaza brings together sixteen essays and poems by twelve Palestinian writers. The book includes political essays, personal narratives, economic analysis, and poetry. It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Writer and contributor Yousef M. Aljamal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Nusierat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip will be the featured speaker.

Wednesday, October 4, 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Seattle Pacific University
3307 3rd Ave W., Seattle, WA 98119, Eaton Hall 112
Middle East Studies Event: Panel on Health and Medicine in Gaza

Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-05 17:30 - 19:00 | University of Washington – Miller Hall, 2012 Skagit Ln, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
I wanted to invite you to join SUPER UW and Samidoun Seattle on October 5th from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Miller Hall 301 as we welcome Yousef Aljamal and Jennifer Bing for a discussion moderated by Dr. Alice Rothchild of the new anthology Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire.

Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving, and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.
Register at bit.ly/LightInGazaUW
Facebook Event: https://fb.me/e/30ECERxWN

Book Tour: Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
2023-10-06 17:30 - 19:00 | St James Presbyterian Church (Bellingham), 910 14th St, Bellingham, WA, 98225, United States
LIGHT IN GAZA: WRITINGS BORN OF FIRE
book tour
Edited by our friends at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Light in Gaza brings together sixteen essays and poems by twelve Palestinian writers. The book includes political essays, personal narratives, economic analysis, and poetry. It imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Writer and contributor Yousef M. Aljamal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Nusierat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip will be the featured speaker.

Friday, October 6, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
St. James Presbyterian Church
910 14th St, Bellingham, WA 98225
Amnesty International & community colleagues present Access Denied: Human Rights and Health Care Refused in Gaza

Ghassan Zeineddine in Conversation With Omar El Akkad [Portland]
2023-11-03 19:00 - 20:00 | Powell Books, 1005 W Burnside St., Portland, OR, 97209, United States
Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. In Dearborn (Tin House), a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans. By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces readers to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community, and how it is that we help one another survive. Zeineddine will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise.

2023 Arab American Book Awards Ceremony: Virtual
2023-11-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
6 p.m. ET Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023

2023 Arab American Book Awards Ceremony
FREE with RSVP
Register for in-person attendance OR Register for virtual attendance
Join the 2023 Arab American Book Award winners and honorable mentions, featuring awardees Chelsea Abdullah, Noor Naga, Edward E. Curtis IV, Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, Zeina Hashem Beck, Nora Lester Murad, Cathy Camper, Evelyn Alsultany, Louise Cainkar, Pauline Homsi Vinson, Amira Jarmakani, Luma Mufleh, Noor Hindi, Lubna Safi, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rashida Tlaib, Adam Tlaib and Miranda Paul for a celebratory reading of the winning books. The event will also be livestreamed.

Children's Literature with Palestinian Kidlit Authors on Instagram Live
2023-11-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual
For #ReadPalestineWeek @desibookaunty and I will be hosting Palestinian Kidlit authors on Instagram Live to talk about children’s literature that celebrates our culture!
Join us to hear @librarycatnyc and @omarabedwrites and @hannahmoushabeck recommend books for young readers

Author Meets BookTok: Sim Kern and Rashid Khalidi on “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine”
2023-12-04 07:00 - 08:30 | Virtual
10am EST / 3pm GMT / 5pm Gaza
Register: https://tinyurl.com/msmdep3u
Join us for this can’t miss event: Sim Kern in conversation with Rashid Khalidi, author of the New York Times bestseller, and Booktok favorite, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Hosted by Librarians and Archivists with Palestine, we will explore Palestinian history, learn about Gaza’s place in it, and how history can help all of us, especially book influencers, meet this moment of mobilization against genocide and war. We are proud to host this event as part of Read Palestine Week.
This event will be recorded.

Book Launch: The Trinity of Fundamentals
2024-02-02 15:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
JOIN US FOR THE BOOK LAUNCH
Join us for a book launch for The Trinity of Fundamentals with members of the Palestinian Youth Movement and 1804 Books! The Trinity of Fundamentals is the fictionalized account of former Palestinian prisoner Rafeedie’s nine-year experience hiding from the Occupation, now presented in its first-ever English translation.
The event will be a discussion of the book with editors from PYM and 1804 Books, followed by a Q&A with audience members. The discussion will also be live-streamed.
Register for the Book Launch Event

Author Alice Rothchild: Old Enough to Know
2024-02-06 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
Tue 2/6 at 7pm, Seward Park
Third Place Books welcomes back author, activist, filmmaker, and physician Alice Rothchild for her new book for young readers.
Being the new kid is always hard, but try starting the year with a name like Mohammed Omar Mohammed Abu Srour, with a homemade lunch of humus and za’atar. On top of that, on the very first day of school, a kid tells his older hijab-wearing sister to “go back where you came from.” Mohammed and his sister love their grandmother, but she thinks her stories about life in Palestine will help them with their problems. What does Grandmother’s ancient history have to do with classroom bullies? She never learned to read and Mohammed can’t even find Palestine on a map. Feels like fourth grade’s going to last forever.
RSVP here

Author Alice Rothchild: Old Enough to Know
2024-06-08 18:00 - 19:00 | Village Books, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, WA, 98225
All ages are welcome to join us in the Readings Gallery to celebrate Old Enough to Know, a middle grade novel that explores identity and understanding.
FREE FAMILY EVENT! Click here to reserve your spot or pre-order a copy of Old Enough to Know!*
Nine-year-old Mohammed Omar Mohammed Abu Srour and his 16-year-old sister move to a new city where they face a challenging first week of school. Their grandmother grounds them in her story: from a peasant village in Palestine, struggling for survival in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, to coming to the US.
“It unapologetically and truthfully weaves the story of Palestine, then and now, through the life young Mohammad who lives in America. A great book for young people.”
— Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five
“More than a story of children struggling to be accepted into a new school, this tale weaves in their family history in another land, a dark narrative of loss and dispossession that also forms their identity. Poignant and heartbreaking, it is a story of reckoning with the past, while trying to navigate the present, in a world that does not understand.”
— Fida Jiryis, author of Stranger in My Own Land
Alice Rothchild, author, filmmaker, and physician, is focused on human rights and social justice. She writes and lectures widely, is the author of a number of books addressing health and human rights issues in Israel/Palestine, and a young adult and a middle grade novel that explore the region for young people. She was last in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in August 2023.

Palestinian Children's Day of Action: Story Sunbirds Read Aloud
2024-11-07 | Virtual
You’re invited to our Story Sunbirds Read-Aloud online via Zoom this Thursday, November 7, from 8am to 7pm EST.
And we want to share the line-up of authors and illustrators with you!
Just a few of our participating children’s book creators include:
Aida Salazar, Daniel José Older, Maysa Odeh, Eve Ewing, Hatem Aly, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Isabel Quintero, Hannah Moushabeck, and Jacqueline Woodson!!
We’re adding more kidlit folks before Thursday, but we wanted to share most of the authors and illustrators you can for sure tune in to hear from.

There will be story-sharing, draw-alongs, book giveaways, and solidarity with the children in Gaza who pled with the world one year ago outside Al Shifa Hospital on November 7, 2023. We will read or draw for them, to honor them, for you, and to raise funds for Middle East Children’s Alliance via The People Stand With Gaza. As a community of children’s book creators, we must show our solidarity with children.

Thank you to all those participating and to the coalition members who began this Palestinian Children’s Day of Action for including the Story Sunbirds kidlit collective for all.
We’re encouraging schools, libraries, and all interested educational groups to join us during whatever time slot works for you! Plus, there will be book giveaways!

Author: Zaynab Mohammed
2024-12-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Zaynab Mohammed to our Ravenna store for a reading of her new book, Are You Listening?: Weaving a Tapestry From Pain into Beauty. Blending poetry and memoir, the book explores intergenerational displacement, and speaks the truths of a woman who loses her innocence at a young age due to cultural inequity. Mohammed is a writer and an award-winning performance poet whose work pays homage to the cultures of her Iraqi, Lebanese, and Palestinian ancestors.

National Book Award Winner: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
2024-12-06 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha reads from Something About Living, her National Book Award-winning third poetry collection.

This event is free and open to the public. Please help us plan for audience size by RSVPing here.
It’s nearly impossible to write poetry that holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest at the same time, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s gorgeous and wide-ranging new collection Something About Living does just that. Her poems interweave Palestine’s historic suffering, the challenges of living in this world full of violence and ill will, and the gentle delights we embrace to survive that violence. Khalaf Tuffaha’s elegant poems sing the fractured songs of Diaspora while remaining clear-eyed to the cause of the fracturing: the multinational hubris of colonialism and greed.
This collection is her witness to our collective unraveling, vowel by vowel, syllable by syllable. “Let the plural be a return of us” the speaker of “On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals” says and this plurality is our tenuous humanity and the deep need to hang on to kindness in our communities. In these poems Khalaf Tuffaha reminds us that love isn’t an idea; it is a radical act. Especially for those who, like this poet, travel through the world vigilantly, but steadfastly remain heart first. —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is the author of Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the Firecracker Award, and Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry. Her writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Revie, the Nation, Poets.org, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion and We Call to the Eye and the Night. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. She is currently curating a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com

Naomi Shihab Nye: Grace Notes — Poems about Families
2025-02-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Rental Partner: Seattle Arts & Lectures presents
Naomi Shihab Nye
Grace Notes — Poems about Families
Thu Feb 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm PST
https://townhallseattle.org/event/naomi-shihab-nye/

Naomi Shihab Nye has spent more than forty years as a self-described “wandering poet,” traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Beloved by generations of readers and writers, Nye uses her writing with themes of love, family, and resilience to attest to our shared humanity.
National Book Award Finalist and former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye’s Grace Notes: Poems about Families celebrates family and community. This rich collection of one hundred never-before-published poems is also the poet’s most personal work to date. With poems about her own childhood and school years, her parents and grandparents, and the people who have touched and shaped her life in so many ways, this is an emotional and sparkling collection to savor, share, and read again and again.

Virtual Conversation with Mohammed El-Kurd and Robin D.G. Kelley
2025-02-11 16:30 - 17:30 | Virtual
On Tuesday, February 11th, join Mohammed El-Kurd and Robin D.G. Kelley for a virtual conversation to mark the release of Perfect Victims.

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
Pre-order Perfect Victims through Bookshop or wherever good books are sold: http://www.bookshop.org/a/1039/9798888903155
***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***
Speakers:
Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation’s first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which has been translated into several languages.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.

Book: To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States
2025-02-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Karam Dana
Thursday February 13th, 2025 @ 7:00PM – 8:00 PM

Professor Karam Dana discusses his new book To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. It provides a new lens on activism around Palestinian issues, demonstrating how the global Palestinian diaspora has driven transnational political movements.
In recent years, attitudes in the United States toward the Palestinian cause have shifted dramatically. Although Palestinians have long been demonized in U.S. media and politics, their struggle portrayed as illegitimate, emergent progressive voices increasingly challenge the status quo on Israel and Palestine and express solidarity with Palestinian resistance. What accounts for this change and its evolution?
Karam Dana explores the ways that exile has shaped Palestinian identity and allowed for new forms of global activism. He examines the social, political, economic, and technological forces that have created space for Palestinian voices to be heard by wider audiences worldwide. Drawing on interviews with scholars and advocates—including members of the Palestinian diaspora and Jewish American activists—as well as public opinion data and media analysis, Dana traces how global Palestinian communities have influenced American views. He addresses the backlash against pro-Palestinian advocacy but argues that solidarity with Palestinians—both in the United States and globally—will continue to strengthen. Timely and insightful, To Stand with Palestine offers an inside look at how Palestinians have shared their story with the world and why sympathy for their plight is growing, with significant implications for the global political landscape.
Karam Dana is the Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative Research and the founding director of the American Muslim Research Institute at the University of Washington Bothell.

Teach Truth: Jesse Hagopian
2025-02-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Seward Park, 5041 Wilson Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, a much-needed reckoning with the roots of this latest wave of censorship and an urgent call to action to defend education.

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome local educator, activist, and writer Jesse Hagopian to our Seward Park store for a presentation of his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education.
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.

Omar El Akkad with Ijeoma Oluo at Seattle Public Library
2025-02-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Central – Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States
Award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad discusses his new book, ONE DAY EVERYONE WILL ALWAYS BE AGAINST THIS, with Ijeoma Oluo

Professor Karam Dana at Third Place Books: To Stand with Palestine
2025-03-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
Although Palestinians have long been demonized in U.S. media and politics, their struggle portrayed as illegitimate, emergent progressive voices increasingly challenge the status quo on Israel and Palestine and express solidarity with Palestinian resistance. What accounts for this change and its evolution?
Third Place Books is pleased to welcome University of Washington Bothell professor Dr. Karam Dana for a presentation and discussion of his new book, To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States. Timely and insightful, To Stand with Palestine offers an inside look at how Palestinians have shared their story with the world and why sympathy for their plight is growing, with significant implications for the global political landscape. He will be joined in conversation by UW professor Dr. Reşat Kasaba. This event is free and open to the public.
For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.

Author Laila Lalami at Elliot Bay Bookstore
2025-03-18 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami visits the store to celebrate the release of her latest novel. The Dream Hotel is a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
This event is free to the public. Please help us plan for audience size by RSVPing here.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; was on the longlist for the Booker Prize; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Lalami’s writing appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.

Laila Lalami presenting The Dream Hotel
2025-03-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
MARCH 18, 2025 @ 7:00PM
Presenting The Dream Hotel in Seattle
Elliott Bay Book Company
1521 10th Avenue
Seattle, Washington
https://lailalalami.com/events/

Alissa Walter presents 'Contested City'
2025-03-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA, 98155, United States
A history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war.

Palestinian Author Safa Suleiman at Brick and Mortar presenting Hilwa's Gifts
2025-04-01 18:30 - 19:30 | Brick and Mortar Bookstore, 7430 164th Ave NE - Suite B105, Redmond, WA, 98052, United States
Safa Suleiman and Anait Semirdzhyan, author and illustrator of HILWA’S GIFTS

Tuesday Apr 1st, 2025

6:30 PM

–

7:30 PM

Kids’ event

Brick & Mortar Books

Join us to welcome debut author Safa Suleiman and local illustrator Anait Semirdzhyan as we celebrate the release of their new picture book, Hilwa’s Gifts!
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Ali has arrived in Palestine for a visit just in time for the olive harvest. His grandfather, Seedo, and Hilwa—his favorite tree—greet him in the grove, where Seedo explains that Hilwa has many gifts to share. Other family members whack the trees’ branches with sticks, singing “Zaytoon, ya zaytoon” while cousins clap and dance and happily pick up fallen olives. (Luckily, a gentle whack is all it takes for Hilwa’s fruits to rain down!) The next day, at the olive press, Ali watches the drip of gold liquid into a can, another of Hilwa’s gifts. Later, they picnic under the tree’s branches with hot mint tea, pita, and delicious olive oil swirled on hummus. Tradition is the greatest gift of all: the family gathering—generation after generation—to celebrate a bountiful harvest. Dynamic illustrations and a graceful text peppered with Arabic words, plus a glossary and author’s note, make for an intimate picture-book debut about a child discovering his heritage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Safa Suleiman is a Palestinian American educator with more than twenty years of experience in undergraduate and elementary school pedagogy. She now focuses on writing and teaching through storytelling centering the Palestinian and the American Muslim communities. Hilwa’s Gifts is her first book. She lives with her family in Colorado on the homeland of the Ute Nation.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR:
Anait Semirdzhyan is the illustrator of Just Us by Molly Beth Griffin, Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day by Astrid Kamalyan, The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale by Aya Khalil, and many other acclaimed books for children. Born in Kazakhstan and raised in Armenia, she now lives in the Seattle area with her husband and twin daughters.

Author Safa Suleiman: Hilwa's Gifts
2025-06-14 11:30 - 13:00 | Register for Location
Author Safa Suleiman will be doing an introduction, reading of the book and Q&A with kiddos.
In Bellevue! Please register for location

Author Event: Hala Alyan w/ Gabrielle Bates
2025-06-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Hala Alyan w/ Gabrielle Bates
Thursday June 19th, 2025 @ 7:00PM – 8:00 PM

Award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan discusses her debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, in which Alyan’s experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future. She’s joined alongside poet Gabrielle Bates.
To help us anticipate audience size, please RSVP here!
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.
As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling—a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.
Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?
A stunningly lyrical and brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood, and peoplehood, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unraveling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.
Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Gabrielle Bates‘s poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023) was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Electric Lit and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. In addition to freelance writing and editing, she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium; co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon; and serves occasionally as faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center, the Tin House Writers’ Workshops, and Brooklyn Poets. The recipient of support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Artist Trust, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Believer, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. www.gabriellebat.es

Cookbook Author Talk: Sami Tamimi - Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine!
2025-07-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Book Larder, 4252 Fremont Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98103, United States
Book Larder is thrilled to welcome Sami Tamimi to celebrate his newest book, Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine! In this highly anticipated book, Sami—the award winning author of Falastin, Jerusalem and co-founder of Ottolenghi—celebrates the diverse cuisine of Palestine with plant-based and vegetarian recipes for festive meals, breads, desserts, and more. Sami will join us for an author talk and book signing on Monday, July 21st at 6:30pm, and there will be bites from the book to try! Sami will be in conversation with local cooking instructor and longtime friend of the shop Nadia Tommalieh.
Reservations are non-refundable and can include a signed copy of the $37.99 book. Applicable sales tax and a $0.75 transaction fee are also included, as well as a small surcharge towards food costs.
Can’t attend but still want a signed book? Order here for shipping or in-store pickup.
About the book: The first solo cookbook from Ottolenghi co-founder Sami Tamimi, Boustany is a homage to Palestinian food and culture. “Boustany” translates from Arabic as “my garden,” which reflects Sami’s signature style and approach to food: colourful and simple vegetable- and grain-led dishes. Bold, inspiring and ever-evolving, Boustany picks up where Falastin left off, with flavour-packed vegetable-based dishes, including pantry items, midweek easy meals and special to-be-shared dishes. It’s an approach that’s strongly present in Palestinian cuisine, from building your mooneh, or pantry, by preserving seasonal vegetables and herbs to lining the dinner table with a variety of salads and condiments reflective of a love for fresh and vibrant food.
This is how Sami grew up eating – platters of eggplant and chickpeas with a spicy green lemon sauce and fragrant lentil fatteh that always tasted better the next day. These are the 100 vegan and vegetarian dishes he has known, loved, cooked, and shared with friends, including:

Braised eggs with pita bread, tomatoes & za’atar
Smoky chickpeas with cilantro tahini
Crushed butter beans with orange & mint
Couscous fritters with preserved lemon yogurt
Jerusalem sesame bread
Pan-baked tahini, halva & coffee brownie
Labneh & pomegranate ice cream

Boustany is filled with vibrant and lively photographs of everyday meals that invite you into Sami’s home. With recipes for breads, dinner parties, fermenting your own vegetables, and more, Sami shares the cultural fabric of Palestine through his eyes.

Book Launch Event: "Gaza I Spy," by Feda Shtia
2025-07-27 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Gaza I Spy is a powerful and poignant photography book in a luxurious coffee table book style, offering a rare glimpse into the lives of children in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel war. Through over 200 striking images, captured from October 2023 to the present, this book documents the resilience, innocence, and strength of Gaza’s youngest residents as they navigate life among the rubble.

Sunday, July 27 Madafeh Program: Book Launch Event: “Gaza I Spy,” by Feda Shtia
Program starts at 12:00 PM US EDT; 19:00 Palestine, 18:00 Europe, UK 17:00.
Please Click Here to register to attend this event via Zoom.
