Sanaa Seif with Sharif Abdel Kouddous (in person)
2022-05-02 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Making this Seattle visit as part of a national, in-person tour around the U.S. are Egyptian activist, film editor, and one-time political prisoner Sanaa Seif, along with Cairo-based independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous. They will be discussing the extraordinary book of Sanaa Seif’s imprisoned brother Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s writings, You Have Not Been Defeated: Selected Works (Seven Stories). Alaa Abd El-Fattah is probably the highest profile political prisoner currently being held in Egypt – one of many, however, including Sanaa Seif herself until recently.
“You can’t jail a revolution. Alaa Abd el-Fattah is proof. These essays, many handwritten and smuggled from a prison cell, breathe life into the 2011 moment, what shaped its revolutionary possibilities and terrible betrayals. This book is a memory of Tahrir Square that still reverberates like a heartbeat throughout the world.”– Nick Estes.
“In a totalitarian system where even ideas are punishable with imprisonment, this collection of essays from one of Egypt’s most high-profile political prisoners is like an oasis in a desolate landscape. Part manifesto, part memoir, and part record of some of Abd El-Fattah’s trial scenes that are more than worthy of Kafka, the book contains passages smuggled out from Cairo’s infamous Tora prison.”– Ruth Michaelson, The Guardian.
“Written with blood and fire, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a brilliant and devastating testament by one of Egypt’s great revolutionaries.”– Molly Crabapple.
This is scheduled to be a live/in-person program at Elliott Bay Book Company. Registration is optional.

The Art of the Short Story: Small Odysseys (Zoom)
2022-05-03 17:30 - 19:00
Small Odysseys celebrates the latest gems of contemporary short fiction–striking and joyful, the collection elucidates the character of the current literary landscape. Join Small Odysseys’ editor and contributors as they discuss this thrilling and impactful collection of works.

Authors participating include:
Edwidge Danticat, Omar El Akkad, Hannah Tinti, and J. Robert Lennon

Virtual Poetry Book Event: Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
2022-05-07 12:00 - 13:00
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and librarian who grew up in Gaza; he will be in conversation with best-selling author Mary Karr to celebrate his debut book of poems, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza published by City Lights Books.

“Mosab Abu Toha is an astonishingly gifted young poet from Gaza, almost a seer with his eloquent lyrical vernacular … His poems break my heart and awaken it, at the same time. I feel I have been waiting for his work all my life.”–Naomi Shihab Nye
In this poetry debut Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege in Gaza, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a profound humanity.
Mosab founded the Edward Said Library (the first English-language library in Gaza), a project that MECA supports.

Comics Club: Huda Fahmy Author Visit (KCLS online)
2022-05-10 17:00 - 18:00
Love comics? Meet Huda Fahmy, author of the very funny book, Huda F Are You?. She will talk about her graphic novel and how she created it.
Please register.
You will be emailed a link no later than one hour before the program start time. If you do not see an email, check your Junk or Spam folder.

Author Voices with Malaka Gharib
2022-05-11 19:30 - 20:30
Join a discussion with Malaka Gharib, author of I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir, winner of a 2020 Arab American Book Award.
Available for purchase from Third Place Books.
Sponsored by the King County Library System Foundation.

Please register at: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/aut…
Reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities is available by request. Email access@kcls.org at least seven days before the event. Automated closed captioning is always available for online events.

Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth: Town Hall (virtual)
2022-05-17 18:00 - 19:30
It can be easy to settle into the narrative that short-sighted, individualist behavior is a natural trait of all humankind, especially when considering how the human impact on the Earth has only recently become apparent to so many. But this narrative is not shared by all people and cultures; for the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet – and of life itself – is a story that is many generations long. It is also a story of adaptation, perseverance, courage, and resourcefulness in the face of genocide and destruction.
In an innovative work of research and reportage, We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today’s environmental crisis. The book draws on interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic regions. Together, they share knowledge, experience, questions, observations, and dreams of maintaining the best relationship possible with all life.
We Are the Middle of Forever illuminates the perspectives of those who have been long-attuned to a changing planet. As we look for new ideas and responses to our shared human challenges, Indigenous voices offer hope, connection, and a welcome antidote to the despair arising from the climate crisis.
Dahr Jamail is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq as well as The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. He has won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and the Izzy Award. He lives in Washington State.

Infernal Harpies: An Evening Reading Hosted by Mythic Delirium
2022-06-18 17:00 - 18:30
An evening of short reads and long talks; there’ll be a Q&A at the end.
It’s at 8PM EST tonight over Zoom, but make sure to register first! It’s free!

P&P Live! & DCPL Present Zahra Marwan | WHERE BUTTERFLIES FILL THE SKY
2022-06-30 15:00 - 16:00
Zahra Marwan discusses her picture book WHERE BUTTERFLIES FILL THE SKY, the true story of her and her family’s immigration from Kuwait.

About this event

Politics and Prose is delighted to partner with the DC Public Library and the DC Public Library Foundation for a Beyond the Book program with author Zahra Marwan who presents her picture book WHERE BUTTERFLIES FILL THE SKY.
Beyond the Book is a library literacy program that supports developing readers aged 5-8 to become successful and joyful readers. Beyond the Book is made possible by the generous support of the DC Public Library Foundation. More information about Beyond the Book can be found here.
The first 50 people to register for the event and select the “Free Event Admission + Free Book” option at registration will receive a complimentary copy of the book for their home library (one book per family, please). Recipients of the complimentary copy will pick their book up in the Children’s department at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G St. NW, Washington, DC, beginning Thursday, June 30. Please note that complimentary book copies must be picked up by Saturday, July 9. These books are generously donated by the District of Columbia Public Library Foundation.
About the book:
As a child, Zahra Marwan left the only home she’d ever known in Kuwait for a strange and unfamiliar land named New Mexico. Her father – and as such, her siblings and herself – were deemed stateless citizens of Kuwait, unable to obtain an education, healthcare or even get married. Leaving behind the familiar turquoise of the sea and the faded greens and yellows of the desert, Zahra is surprised to find similarities in the magical vistas of her new home. Although she misses the comfort of her aunties and the beauty of Kuwait’s butterfly-filled skies, New Mexico surprises with its own wondrous landscapes, and new friends who help Zahra feel like she belongs.
Zahra Marwan was born in Kuwait, and moved to Albuquerque with her family when she was a child. She studied visual arts in France and works primarily in Illustration. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and works in her studio at the Harwood Art Center. Her watercolor-and-ink illustrations incorporate Kuwaiti tendencies into her daily life.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pp-live-dcpl-present-zahra-marwan-where-butterflies-fill-the-sky-tickets-353956171437

Author: Salma El-Wardany (virtual)
2022-07-09 13:00 - 14:00
This midday Saturday virtual reading sends us over the Atlantic to wherever Egyptian/Irish poet, novelist, spoken word performer and BBC broadcaster Salma El-Wardany may be. She is here with her much-anticipated, brilliant first novel, These Impossible Things (Grand Central).
“These Impossible Things is an addictive portrait of three Muslim friends moving through a pivotal time in womanhood, caught between expectation and possibility, hungry to earn wisdom of their own. Salma El-Wardany deftly reveals searing and poignant truths about the female experience, ones so rarely confronted in fiction. What a gift to be inside this author’s mind through the pages of her beautiful and memorable writing.”—Ashley Audrain.
“Salacious, incisive, and unapologetically Muslim, Salma El-Wardany’s bold and brilliant story doesn’t shy away from the taboo subjects of religion and sex. These Impossible Things shows that Muslim women are multifaceted and complex despite the dearth of representation we are allowed.”—Blair Imani.
Virtually hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company.

Virtual US Book Launch Event - "Oranges from Jaffa," by Nadine Sayegh
2022-07-10 09:15 - 10:15
Oranges from Jaffa – A true story about the end of the golden age of Palestine
Please join us for a conversation with and a reading of book excerpts by the book author, Nadine Sayegh, who is an Austrian Palestinian with Jaffa roots.

Jaffa Oranges is a family history, a novel against oblivion. The book presents the coming of age story of Nicolas Sayegh, a Palestinian Tom-Sawyer-type, who, together with his friends, roams the sun-drenched neighborhood streets of Jaffa in 1947 – an ancient Arab city, the commercial capital of Palestine at the time, fragrant with the smell of orange blossoms. Nicolas is always up to childhood adventures and mischief, exploring his parents’ magical orange groves, parading through his neighborhood like a cowboy on a donkey’s back, or sneaking out with his best friend Suhail to the local Alhambra cinema. The story poetically portrays the daily life of a well-to-do Christian Palestinian family and the people of Jaffa as a whole, giving insights into the local Palestinian culture that was prevalent at the time. However, Nicolas’ carefree days and boyhood ended abruptly in the spring of 1948, when the state of Israel was created and most inhabitants of Jaffa were driven out by the Zionist forces.

Conner Habib at Powell Books (Portland)
2022-07-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Powell Books, 1005 W Burnside St., Portland, OR, 97209, United States
An English teacher is gaslit by his charismatic high school bully in a tense story of deception, manipulation, and murder from Conner Habib, host of the Against Everyone with Conner Habib podcast. Single father Todd is relaxing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of a man approaching from the water’s edge. As the man draws closer, Todd recognizes him as Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly in their teenage years but now seems overjoyed to have “run into” his old friend. Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night? What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and cunning. As Jack invades Todd’s life, pain and intimidation from the past unearth knife-edge suspense in the present. Set in a small town on the New England coast, Habib’s debut introduces characters trapped in isolation by the expansive woods and the encroaching ocean, their violence an expression of repressed desire and the damage it can inflict. Both gruesome and tender, Hawk Mountain (W. W. Norton) offers a compelling look at how love and hate are indissoluble, intertwined until the last breath.

Please note: Signed preordered books will be shipped to you and are not available for pick-up in the store the night of the event (but if you’re planning to attend, don’t worry! Signed editions are usually available at the events). Also, we are sorry but we can not accommodate personalized inscriptions, or guarantee the signed books are first editions. Thanks for your understanding.
See our full selection of signed editions from Powell’s

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Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments

Single father Todd is relaxing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of a man approaching from the water’s edge. As the man draws closer, Todd recognizes him as Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly in their teenage years, but now seems overjoyed to have “run into” his old friend. Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night?
What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and cunning. As Jack invades Todd’s life, pain and intimidation from the past unearth knife-edge suspense in the present. Set in a small town on the New England coast, Conner Habib’s debut introduces characters trapped in isolation by the expansive woods and the encroaching ocean, their violence an expression of repressed desire and the damage it can inflict. Both gruesome and tender, Hawk Mountain offers a compelling look at how love and hate are indissoluble, intertwined until the last breath.

Review
“The tension is palpable on every page, and Habib skillfully illustrates the complexity of relationships and the pain of unmet desires, both queer and otherwise. His prose is as brutal as it is profound and beautiful…. A brutal and gorgeous tale of manipulation, control, and desire.” Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
“Conner Habib’s debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush.” Clive Barker
Review
“A deeply disturbing yet, somehow, soaring novel I won’t soon forget. It plumbs the depths of traumatized characters trapped within our damaging culture. I couldn’t look away, even when I was looking from between my fingers.” Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club
Review
“The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plummet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won’t let up until the final, shocking moments.” Caitlin Doughty, bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
About the Author
Conner Habib hosts the podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib, which features conversations with artists, intellectuals, and countercultural figures, and covers topics as wide-ranging as punk rock, philosophy, pornography, and occultism. His nonfiction writing has appeared in multiple online and print magazines. He lives in Ireland. Hawk Mountain is his first novel.

Conner Habib with Jarret Middleton — Hawk Mountain: A Novel
2022-07-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
“Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!” —Andrea Lawlor

Third Place Books welcomes Conner Habib—host of the popular podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib—to our Ravenna store! Join Habib for a discussion of his debut novel Hawk Mountain, a fast-paced novel of deceit and suspense following the story of an English teacher re-encountering his high school bully seemingly by chance (but nothing is ever by chance). Habib will joined in conversation with Jarret Middleton, author of Darkansas. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required in advance.
Copies of Hawk Mountain will be available for purchase at the store. 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!
Click here for more about our COVID-19 policies for in-person events.
Having trouble accessing Eventbrite? Click here.
JULY 22 – Seattle, WA – Third Place Books (Ravenna) with Jarett Middleton – this is a TICKETED EVENT

Mona Awad in Conversation With Iain Reid
2022-08-03 17:00 - 18:00
From the author of Bunny, which Margaret Atwood hails as “genius,” comes a “wild, and exhilarating” (Lauren Groff) novel about a theater professor who is convinced staging Shakespeare’s most maligned play will remedy all that ails her — but at what cost? Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now, she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers. That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known. With prose Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged… genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books) is a “fabulous novel” (Mary Karr) about a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain. Awad will be joined in conversation by Iain Reid, author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

Matthew Teller, author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem with Palestine Museum US
2022-09-04 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
The program begins at 12 Noon US EDT; 7:00 PM Palestine Time
Please join us for a session of open discussion about Palestinian topics.
Our guest for this episode is Matthew Teller, author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, A New Biography of the Old City
This is a Virtual Book Launch

About the Book
This unique, absorbing biography of Jerusalem brings to light its overlooked histories and diverse contemporary voices.
In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. The Old City has never had “four quarters” as its maps proclaim. And beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, many of its quarters are little known to visitors, its people ignored and their stories untold. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem lets the communities of the Old City speak for themselves. Ranging from ancient past to political present, it evokes the city’s depth and cultural diversity.
Matthew Teller’s highly original “biography” features the Old City’s Palestinian and Jewish communities, but also spotlights its Indian and African populations, its Greek and Armenian and Syriac cultures, its downtrodden Dom Gypsy families, and its Sufi mystics. It discusses the sources of Jerusalem’s holiness and the ideas—often startlingly secular—that have shaped lives within its walls. It is an evocation of place through story, led by the voices of Jerusalemites.

Rajiv Mohabir and Mortada Gzar - Live at Elliott Bay
2022-09-07 19:00 - 20:00
Noted poet and translator Rajiv Mohabir, along with Seattle-based Iraqi writer Mortada Gzar (more on him below) make this welcome September visit for the paperback of Roajiv Mohabir’s much-acclaimed prose debut, Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir. Recipient of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing (which has helped launch several excellent books), this was also a Lambda and PEN Book Book Award finalist, and received a 2021 Indies FOREWORD Award for LGBTQ+ non-fiction.

P&P Live! Zoulfa Katouh | As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow with Sabaa Tahir (virtual)
2022-09-13 15:00 - 17:00
Salama Kassab was just a normal teenager living a normal life. But as revolution ignites Syria, burning stronger and brighter with each day, Salama recognizes the urgent need to seek safety outside of the country. Just a first year Pharmacy student, she is asked to perform procedures way beyond her education at the local hospital, where she witnesses firsthand the brutality of war. As she mourns family members lost in the violence, and struggles to protect her pregnant sister-in-law, her anxiety morphs into a physical manifestation in the form of an imaginary friend, Khawf, who provides comfort as her constant companion. But even as she is desperate to flee to safety, she is conflicted by her loyalty to her country. This gripping work of speculative fiction mixes current events with elements of fantasy, providing a heartbreaking glimpse into a country at war. Author Zoulfa Katouh draws from her own experiences as a Syrian to create a well-rounded and relatable protagonist and supporting characters.
Registrations that include the purchase of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow will come with exclusive art cards while supplies last.
Pre-orders of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow come with additional promotional items. Once you have purchased your copy, CLICK HERE to complete the form and upload your receipt. Items will be shipped directly from the author and require proof of purchase.
Zoulfa Katouh is a Syrian Canadian based in Switzerland. She is currently pursuing her master’s in Drug Sciences. As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is her debut novel.
Sabaa Tahir began writing her #1 New York Times bestselling An Ember in the Ashes series while working nights as a newspaper editor. The series has been translated into over thirty-five languages, and the first book in the series was named one of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time and one of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best YA Books of the decade. Tahir’s most recent novel, All My Rage, released in March 2022 to widespread critical acclaim. An instant New York Times bestseller, All My Rage has received eight starred reviews and the 2022 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry.

Abdulrazak Gurnah — Afterlives — with Tope Folarin (LIVE and virtual)
2022-09-13 16:00 - 18:00
Upcoming Event

Tuesday, September 13, 2022 – 7:00pm ET

Click here for tickets to this in-person event!
At this in-person event (with a virtual attendance option), masks and proof of vaccination are required. Please review our health and safety protocols here.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. After fleeing his native Zanzibar for the United Kingdom at age 18, Gurnah turned to writing in English as a way to make sense of the hardships of a refugee’s existence. With a gift for transforming the experience of displacement into gripping fiction, Gurnah brings intimacy and humanity to the realities of colonialism. Afterlives follows a trio of young people living, working, and falling in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together against the backdrop of the German colonial rule of 20th-century East Africa.
Gurnah will be in conversation with Tope Folarin, the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University, and the author of the novel A Particular Kind of Black Man.
with Politics and Prose
This program will run approximately 1 hour.
Virtual attendees will receive the event access link 48 hours, 2 hours, and 10 minutes before the event begins.

Abdulrazak Gurnah: In‑Person & Online
2022-09-20 19:30 - 21:00 | Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives is a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. Following the story of Ilyas, a boy stolen by German colonial troops, Afterlives is a novel that “gathers close all those who were meant to be forgotten, and refuses their erasure.

At Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

In Person & Online

Literary Arts

Tuesday, September 20, 2022 7:30 pm PST

Hugo Literary Series 2022-23 Season
2022-09-30 19:00 - 20:30 | Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Reincarnation: September 30, 2022, 7 pm
Featuring Omar El Akkad, Lilliam Rivera, Joshua Mohr, and Brenna Bruce

“Every year, Hugo House commissions new prose, poetry, and songs based on a writing prompt. During the Hugo Literary Series, artists share the results. This year, our artists will explore the theme re/birth to celebrate, if not the end of the pandemic, then at least some way of us living in the world with it, and the revival/resurgence of creativity that has been dormant for two long years.”

Maya Abu-Alhayyat, Zeina Hashem Beck | Live Reading + Book Release
2022-10-06 15:00 - 17:00
Free with RSVP
Register for in-person attendance OR Register for virtual attendance
AANM presents a live bilingual poetry reading featuring an incredible lineup of poets: Maya Abu-Alhayyat and Zeina Hashem Beck. Join us as the poets read excerpts from their new works, exploring such themes of language and notions of home.
Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She has published four collections of poems, four novels, and numerous children’s stories, including The Blue Pool of Questions. She contributed to and wrote a foreword for A Bird Is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry, and she is also an editor of The Book of Ramallah. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Cordite Poetry Review, The Guardian, and Literary Hub. Abu Al-Hayyat lives in Jerusalem and works in Ramallah.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet and the author of two previous full-length collections of poetry: Louder than Hearts (Bauhan Publishing, 2017) and To Live in Autumn (The Backwaters Press, 2014), as well as two chapbooks: 3arabi Song (Rattle, 2016) and There Was and How Much There Was (smith|doorstop, 2016). Educated in Arabic, English, and French, Zeina has a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize, and her work appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. Zeina is the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry produced by Sowt. She recently moved to California with her husband and two daughters.

Rusha Latif with Isma'il Kushkush
2022-10-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Virtual
This virtual program brings to readers here (everywhere) the work of Rusha Latif, a San Francisco Bay area writer/researcher and a first-generation Egyptian American. Travels and research undertaken in Cairo a decade ago and since have now become her new book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (American University in Cairo Press).
“As its excellent subtitle indicates, this book debunks many myths related to the so-called leaderless revolutions through meticulous fieldwork investigation of the young leaders of Egypt’s 2011 uprising in its Cairene epicenter. It is a much-needed contribution to the study of the twenty-first century’s pattern of uprisings, showing how a popular movement that goes beyond an ephemeral explosion of anger is necessarily led by more than a virtual network.”―Gilbert Achcar.
“In a moment characterized by the revival of authoritarian regimes and democratic setbacks, this book is a welcome analysis that puts youth activism in post-2011 Egypt in a revealing historic, sociological, and political perspective. Using primary sources, including in-depth interviews with the youth leaders of the January 25 Revolution, Latif’s work offers indispensable insights into the mobilization strategies and trajectories of the youth groups that resisted three successive regimes between 2011 and 2013. Her book powerfully explains how youth activism has forever changed Egyptian politics.”―Amr Hamzawy.
“Rusha Latif . . . embedded herself with young activists and writes about what the world can learn from a defeated revolt.”―Leila Fadel, NPR.
Isma’il Kushkush will join Rusha in conversation. He is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, CNN, the Associated Press (AP), Guernica Magazine, and others. He has covered political, economic, social and cultural stories from Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Sweden, Israel the Palestinian territories and the United States. He is currently based in Khartoum, Sudan.

Author Sahar Mustafah in conversation with afikra
2022-10-10 07:00 - 08:00 | Virtual
Join Sahar in a virtual conversation with afikra, a grassroots movement that evolved into a global media and educational platform focused on the history and culture of the Arab world. RSVP

P&P Live! Muhammad Najem, Nora Neus, & Julie Robine
2022-10-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
Muhammad Najem had mostly known a life of war during his childhood in Syria; he was only thirteen when a bombing killed his father. Realizing that people did not know what families like his were living through, he began reporting on the war using the camera on his phone and social media. Through interviews with kids like himself, he revealed a painful truth: that ordinary Syrians were being bombed by their own government and were spending their days hiding in underground shelters. Despite strong personal losses and tremendous risk for his family, he continued reporting, and his stories began to gain notice around the world. Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria is the graphic memoir written by Muhammad Najem and Nora Neus, the CNN producer who helped bring international recognition to his reporting.
Muhammad Najem is an internationally recognized journalist from Eastern Ghouta, Syria. He began his reporting career as a child, under near-constant bombardment by the Assad regime, by taking videos on his cell phone and posting them on social media. His story went viral in 2018, putting a target on his and his family’s backs. In 2019, he and his family fled Syria and moved to Turkey.

"It Won't Always Be Like This" Author Talk with Malaka Gharib & Hannah Bae
2022-10-11 16:00 - 17:30 | Virtual
This is an online program. Join the 53rd Street Library for a conversation with Malaka Gharib, the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream, to discuss her latest work It Won’t Always Be Like This. A chronicle of growing up with her Egyptian father’s new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country It Won’t Always Be Like This is a touching time capsule of Gharib’s childhood memories—each summer a fleeting moment in time—and a powerful reflection on relationships, values, family, and what happens when it all collides. Malaka will be joined by freelance journalist and fellow author Hannah Bae for what will be an unforgettable discussion on the power of identity and belonging.

Where Do We Come From? Maud Newton, author of Ancestor Trouble, in conversation with Laila Lalami
2022-10-18 17:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
WHERE DO WE COME FROM?
Maud Newton, author of Ancestor Trouble, in conversation with Laila Lalami
5pm PT / 8pm ET, Tuesday, October 18, 2022, online event
Ever since her mother explained that she’d married her father so they would have smart children, Maud Newton has felt vexed by her kin. As an adult, she spent years researching her genealogy, uncovering, among other things, ten of her grandfather’s marriages, an accused witch, and her ancestors’ roles in slavery and genocide. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and the debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity’s dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them. Searching, moving, and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us. Read more about Ancestor Trouble.

Book Event: Nine Quarters of Jerusalem by Matthew Teller (hybrid)
2022-10-30 11:30 - 12:30
Please click here to register for this event.

This is a Hybrid Event, meaning you can attend virtually via Zoom or, in person, at the Palestine Museum US, in Woodbridge, CT, USA. You can register on Zoom and decide later how you want to attend.
Doors open at 2:30; the program begins at 3:00 PM US EDT; 10:00 PM Palestine Time.
Author Matthew Teller will be on site at the Paelstine Museum US to talk about the book and sign copies for buyers.

About the Book
This unique, absorbing biography of Jerusalem brings to light its overlooked histories and diverse contemporary voices.
In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. The Old City has never had “four quarters” as its maps proclaim. And beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, many of its quarters are little known to visitors, its people ignored and their stories untold. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem lets the communities of the Old City speak for themselves. Ranging from ancient past to political present, it evokes the city’s depth and cultural diversity.
Matthew Teller’s highly original “biography” features the Old City’s Palestinian and Jewish communities, but also spotlights its Indian and African populations, its Greek and Armenian and Syriac cultures, its downtrodden Dom Gypsy families, and its Sufi mystics. It discusses the sources of Jerusalem’s holiness and the ideas—often startlingly secular—that have shaped lives within its walls. It is an evocation of place through story, led by the voices of Jerusalemites.

Matthew Teller
Photo Credit Andrew Shaylor

About Author
Matthew Teller writes for the BBC, The Guardian, Times of London, Financial Times, and other global media. He has produced and presented documentaries for BBC Radio and has reported for the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent program from around the Middle East and beyond. He is the author of several travel guides, including the Rough Guide to Jordan. His most recent book is Quite Alone: Journalism from the Middle East 2008–2019.

Author Danny Ramadan at Elliott Bay Book Company
2022-11-11 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Down from his Vancouver home where, in addition to writing, Danny Ramadan has been an activist and advocate, in particular for LGBTQ+ refugees from Syria and the Middle East. The author of an award-winning Canadian children’s book, Salma the Syrian Chef, and a debut novel that was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, The Clothesline Swing, he is here tonight with his new novel, The Foghorn Echoes (Canongate Books). Set between a Damascus riven by war and Vancouver, with time spanning a decade, this is an extraordinary book of hard-sought love between two young men.
”The Foghorn Echoes is a deeply moving book about conflict both internal and external, the ways in which cold accidents – of birth, of place, of time – can leave a human being at war with their own desires, their own sense of self. Danny Ramadan is a gifted, sensitive excavator of the things that break people and put them back together, the past as weight and lightness. In this novel he has created a world of immense sensory and emotional precision, at once true in its living details and yet electric with the presence of ghosts.” – Omar El Akkad.
”The Foghorn Echoes bristles. It burns bright. It shouts into the dark with a voice that hovers between a melody and a lamentation. Danny Ramadan writes in these pages with a spellbinding urgency, stripping bare some of the most painful and fundamental truths about displacement and grief, about rage and betrayal. In the process, he reminds us again and again that even the worst of memories contain redemptive powers. This novel is a tender and impassioned love story for a country, for a people, and for all those who refuse to disappear quietly into the land of the forgotten.” – Maaza Mengiste.
Danny RamadanFriday Nov 11 2022 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live/In-Person at Elliott Bay Book Company.
1521 10th Ave. Seattle, WA 98122

Authors: Peter Cole and Iman Mersal (Virtual)
2022-11-29 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
If only this evening could be staged in the same room, as we range around a good part of the world in hosting three poets – Peter Cole and Iman Mersal virtually at 5 p.m. – and another, Naveen Kishore in store at 7 p.m. Between them, the U.S., Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Canada, and India, with their poetic and literary concerns extending beyond whatever borders those nationalities might pose. This 5 p.m virtual program returns poet/translator/editor Peter Cole to Elliott Bay to read from his newest collection, Draw Me After (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and it helps introduce an overdue major collection of one of the world’s major poets, Iman Mersal with her new book, The Threshold (translated from the Arabic by Robyn Creswell / Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Peter Cole’s Draw Me After very much has ‘drawing’ in it, with work by Terry Winters, which he dares from, so to speak.
“‘Waking the letters from their slumber’: that’s Peter Cole’s mad, sublime task in these phantasmagoric poems. Every line of this book breaks the literal—the letters—into visionary scenes where sorrow marries joy and blessings almost rhyme with curse. A revelation.” —Rosanna Warren.
“Peter Cole shows himself in Draw Me After to be our great master of ekphrasis. Visually, sonically, rhythmically, semantically, his are some of the most inventive, witty, profound, and genuinely beautiful lyric poems of our moment.” —Marjorie Perloff.
Peter Cole has written several previous books of poems, including Hymns & Qualms and Rift, and he has also translated widely from Hebrew and Arabic works—both medieval and modern. With Adina Hoffman, he has co-written Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza and also published books as Ibis Editions. He is the recipient of many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, a National Jewish Book Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven.
Joining us, we believe, from Edmonton, where she is a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Alberta is Iman Mersal. The Threshold, translated by Robyn Creswell, draws from several of her noted earlier books of poetry ranging back nearly thirty years and coming up to the present – A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons, Walking as Long as Possible, Alternative Geography, and Until I Give Up the Idea of Home. Her most recent book, the prose work Traces of Enayat (all of these, we’re giving translated titles), received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature in 2021.
“The publication of Iman Mersal’s The Threshold is a major literary event. Long recognized throughout the Arab world and in Europe, Mersal is one of the strongest confessional (or postconfessional) poets we now have, in any language: her poems are fueled by a mordant wit, sensual vibrancy, and feminist brio. Impatient with pieties—whether political, erotic, or poetic—she writes, like Louise Glück, with emotional intensity and analytic coolness. This is poetry of earned and perfect pitch: the notations of an impassioned mind. I read The Threshold straight through; it will become a permanent companion.” —Maureen N. McLane. “Undeceived, ironic, daring, Iman Mersal’s poems are animated by a singular sensibility. They deal candidly with real life—migration, dying parents, emotional entanglements—and discover general truths among the fine particulars. Robyn Creswell’s translation is deft and subtle, and the Anglophone world is lucky to have it.” —Nick Laird.

Peter Cole and Iman MersalTuesday Nov 29 2022 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Virtually Hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company.
Registration/Information

Author Amal Ghandour [afikra Conversations]
2023-01-16 07:00 - 08:00
Amal Ghandour is a Lebanese-Jordanian author and blogger (Thinking Fits), with a career that spans more than three decades in the fields of research, communication, and community development. Her book, About This Man Called Ali (2009), was named the first biography of a modern Arab artist by the renowned Historian Philip Mansel. Ghandour describes her new book, This Arab Life, A Generation’s Journey Into Silence (October 11, 2022), “as a memoir that is not of an individual but of the generation that came of political age in the 1980s in the Levant.” This Arab Life, she adds, “is an intimate rendition of the times that shaped us; the way we internalized our parents’ myriad dejections and disappointments; the pragmatism and silence that defined us; and the dispiriting inheritance we inexorably bequeathed our own children.” Ghandour holds an MS in International Policy from Stanford University and a BSFS from Georgetown University. Among her works: Aeon, The Daily Beast, Washington Independent Review of Books, Midanmasr, Canvas.

Madafeh - Book Event - Fida Jiryis - author of the book "Stranger in My Own Land"
2023-01-29 09:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them.
This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present—a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother’s death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into.
Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.

Fida Jiryis

About Fida Jiryis
Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian author living in Ramallah. She grew up in Lebanon and Cyprus, the daughter of Palestinian intellectual and leader, Sabri Jiryis. As her family fled Israel’s oppression and wars, Fida’s life has spanned the full spectrum of the Palestinian people’s forced fragmentation: in Israel, the West Bank and the diaspora. Her writings include several collections of Arabic short stories; a contribution to the book, Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller; and Ha-Cluv (The Cage), a Hebrew translation of her short stories published this year. Her most recent book, Stranger in My Own Land, describes her and her family’s remarkable life journey which is, in many respects, the story of Palestine.
