Words for Palestine
2024-12-12 16:00 - 18:00, 2025-03-27 16:00 - 17:15, 2025-04-24 16:00 - 17:15, 2025-05-29 16:00 - 17:15, 2025-06-26 16:00 - 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join our monthly online series “Words for Palestine” which aims to center and highlight Palestinian voices during this devastating time. Featured readers TBA.
“Words For Palestine” is co-sponsored by Al Nadwa Freethinking Society, Mizna, Palestine Writes and RAWI, and is free with RSVP. We encourage you to make a donation to support the work of Palestine Legal and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). Palestine Legal is an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. PCRF is the primary humanitarian organization in Palestine, providing crucial and life-saving relief and humanitarian aid in Gaza.
For questions, e-mail Rewa Zeinati at rzeinati@accesscommunity.org

Meeting Ibn Arabi: His Life and Teachings
2025-01-25 09:00 - 12:30 | Virtual
MIAS Education Team is offering this course as a guided group exploration into Ibn Arabi´ s life and teachings, based on the book by Claude Addas, The Voyage of No Return. The course is open to all and is designed especially for those less familiar with Ibn Arabi. You might be considering joining one of our Voyage courses and would like to ‘meet’ Ibn Arabi as a preparation. We also welcome those already acquainted with Ibn Arabi’s work and wish to know more about his life and the context within which he lived, traveled, and wrote.
Saturday 25th January 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm GMT with a half-hour break
Sunday 26th January 5:00 pm- 8:30 GMT with a half-hour break
Introductory Video
https://youtu.be/c8FnWl0O5Eg
Image ‘”Ibn Arabi on his mule addressing students in the 21st century” by Yasmin Hayat

Content and Method
The book consists of twelve fairly short chapters. Participants will be required to read the material before the session and to note any questions they have. During the sessions, we will discuss any questions and clarify concepts and terminology. Additional excerpts from other works may enrich our understanding during the sessions. We invite you to share any inspiration or thoughts about the text. This course is not composed of lectures and it is not an academic study. Rather, it is an interactive group discussion and a personal engagement with Ibn Arabi. We hope that it thereby serves as a small taster for the Voyage courses.
The course will consist of two sessions Saturday and Sunday. Each session will last 1.5 hours, with a half-hour break, giving a total of six hours.
The book can be bought here: https://its.org.uk/catalogue/ibn-arabi-the-voyage-of-no-return-paperback/
or from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ibn-Arabi-Voyage-No-Return/dp/1911141406/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21GG8H6JBU4Z2&keywords=Voyage+of+no+return&qid=1691926854&sprefix=voyage+of+no+return%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1

Book Bazaar: Middle Eastern Fiction and Poetry in Translation
2025-01-31 13:00 - 15:00 | Denny Hall, Klickitat Lane, Seattle, WA, 98105
Join the founder of the Toronto-based Asemana Books, Dr. Mahdi Ganjavi in Seattle for an exclusive showcase of Asemana’s diverse collection of books, from captivating poetry and gripping fiction to insightful cultural commentary and scholarship.

Denny Hall (DEN): Room 211
Contact: ariafani@uw.edu

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.

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/

Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices
2025-05-08 16:00 - 17:30 | Virtual
Join Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices co-editors to launch the new Rethinking Schools book. Palestine has long been one of the great silences in the official curriculum. Teaching Palestine: Lessons, Stories, Voices provides educators with powerful tools to uncover the history and current context of Palestine-Israel in the classroom — poetry, personal narratives, interviews, role plays, critical reading and writing activities, and more. Teaching Palestine offers a defense of Palestinian humanity centering Palestinian lives, uplifting and celebrating Palestinians’ struggle for justice, and critiquing racism and inequality.
The editors will be joined by musician and activist Macklemore. Register today!

A Night with Mx. Yaffa: Conversation // Reading // Book Signing
2025-06-04 17:30 - 20:00 | SWANA Rose Culture + Community Center, 2942 NE MLK Jr. Boulevard, Portland, OR, 97203, United States
(Open to all, no registration required)
Join us in celebrating the release of Yaffa’s latest book, Sage. Sage is a poetry collection that acknowledges all transphobia is systemic but the pain of everyday interpersonal violence is still felt in our bones. A collection that highlights challenges and joy within interpersonal relationships from the perspective of a queer and trans Palestinian living at the margins of displacement, disability, immigration & ongoing genocide. Sage is a beacon of light, shedding light to wounds that have festered and rotted, and finding the paths forward as fascism claims more of who we are.
Available now in ebook and print!
The CSPP Library will be open! Get a library card, check out + return a book, and support the only community run SWANA Library.
Books will be for sale along with prints, shirts + herbal medicine from the community.
All proceeds go to Trans folks most affected by ongoing gen0cides.
Masks provided and required at @swanarosepdx – community care is a verb

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.

Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee with Sara Hashem ― 'Pearl City'
2025-08-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
Third Place Books is pleased to welcome Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee to our Ravenna store for a conversation about their new novel, Pearl City ― the dramatic conclusion to their Phoenix Hoard series. They will be joined in conversation by The Jasad Heir author Sara Hashem.
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!

Sara Hashem grew up the eldest in her family in Orange County, California. She spent two of her formative years living in Egypt, where she consumed an ocean’s worth of sugar cane juice and wrote stories during the events of Arab Spring.

Whatcom Families for Justice: Bookshare Fundraiser
2025-09-28 13:30 - 16:00 | Bellingham Central Public Library, 210 Central Ave, Bellingham, WA, 98225
THIS SUNDAY, SEPT 28TH 📚

We are happy to announce we’ll be hosting another Bookshare & Give-Away fundraising event at the Bellingham Public Library this weekend on Sunday, September 28, 2025.Books, Zines, and other media will be available to be shared and given away as encouragement and incentive to those who will make donations to families in Gaza.
Palestine has been renowned for years as having one of the highest literacy rates in the world, and as being a place where education and reading are valued, supported, and highly esteemed. Education is integrated into Palestinian culture, heritage, and identity. Which is why Israel (with the support of the United States government) has always targeted it.
This Bookshare fundraiser is in homage to those whose libraries and book collections have been targeted and destroyed by Israel.
This event is not sponsored by the Bellingham Public Library.
We hope to see you on Sunday to further connect and stand in solidarity with Palestinians.

Symposium | Gender, Translation, and the Short Form in the Eurasian Periodical
2025-10-10 09:00 - 15:00 | University of Washington – Thomson Hall, 1911 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
Literary modernity did not always appear in book form, but as a periodical! Throughout the 20th century, literary and cultural production across much of Central, Western, and South Asia reached readers through the pages of periodicals. These periodicals–newspapers, magazines, and journals–housed a variety of literary forms ranging from serialized novels, to poetry, to short stories, alongside advertisements, comics, and photography. This symposium features emerging literary scholarship that investigates short form fiction as it appears in the rhizomatic 20th century periodical, and its intersections with translation and gender. How does fiction move across and between languages in 20th century periodical cultures of Eurasia? What does an explicit and intentional consideration of gender in these translingual (and frequently transnational, or transhistorical) literary movements illuminate? In exploring such questions, this symposium foregrounds gender, translation, and the short form in the growing field of Periodical Studies, and brings together scholars working on texts from across Eurasia, in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Russian, and Turkish
Thomson Hall : Rm 317

Virtual Conversation with Wasim Said
2025-12-06 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual
Join the People’s Center for Palestine on Saturday, December 6th at 10am PT/1pm ET for a virtual conversation with Wasim Said, speaking from Gaza, whose book Witness to the Hellfire of Genocide was written after multiple displacements from his home in Beit Hanoun. His testimony offers an urgent account of life in Gaza under ongoing bombardment—an essential narrative for understanding the realities on the ground and the stakes of documenting genocide in real time. The translation was recently published in October 2025 by 1804 Books, in collaboration with the People’s Center for Palestine and Liberated Texts.

The event will also feature reflections from Thiago Ávila, Fady Joudah, Mousa Alsadah, and Danya Al-Saleh, who will discuss the book’s literary, political, and historical significance and the vital role of witnessing for long-term struggle.

Book Fair
2025-12-13 12:00 - 18:00 | Washington Preparatory School, 18323 Bothell Everett Hwy, Suite 220, Bothell, WA, 98012
Albayan Science Academy & Cordoba AcademyIn collaboration with Allamaho Albayan Book StoreWe’re so excited to host a fun and family-friendly Islamic Book Fair that brings everyone together for learning, culture, and lots of smiles! A huge selection of Islamic and Arabic books along with fun educational games and puzzles

Highlights of Saturday the 13th:

Bake Sales & local vendors.
Puppet show & Storytime for children.

Saturday 13th 12:00 to 6:00 pm
Monday 14th – Thursday 18th
10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Book Fair
2025-12-14 10:00 - 15:00, 2025-12-15 10:00 - 15:00, 2025-12-16 10:00 - 15:00, 2025-12-17 10:00 - 15:00, 2025-12-18 10:00 - 15:00 | Washington Preparatory School, 18323 Bothell Everett Hwy, Suite 220, Bothell, WA, 98012
Albayan Science Academy & Cordoba AcademyIn collaboration with Allamaho Albayan Book StoreWe’re so excited to host a fun and family-friendly Islamic Book Fair that brings everyone together for learning, culture, and lots of smiles! A huge selection of Islamic and Arabic books along with fun educational games and puzzles

Highlights of Saturday the 13th:

Bake Sales & local vendors.
Puppet show & Storytime for children.

Monday 14th – Thursday 18th
10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Scott Kurashige with Karam Dana and Linh Thủy Nguyễn — 'American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism'
2026-05-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.
Third Place Books welcomes scholar, writer, and community activist Scott Kurashige for a conversation about his new book American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism. Connecting domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record, American Peril exposes the history of anti-Asian violence while also tracing the rise of Asian American community protest and activism. University of Washington professors Karam Dana and Linh Thủy Nguyễn join in conversation.
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!

Story-telling in the Arab American Tradition
2026-05-13 17:00 - 19:00 | Pigott Auditorium – Seattle University, 901 12th Ave Sinegal Building, suite 140, Seattle, WA, 98122
Join your colleagues and students from across the university for a celebration of Arab American culture! This special event, in Pigott Auditorium, will feature four presenters and performers. It’s free, open to all, and will feature free food. Please RSVP for planning purposes.
Featuring:
Hebah Fisher | Kerning Cultures
Sabrene Odeh | Baladna PNW
Hanna Eady | Dunya Productions
Giovanna Khoury | SU Student
Food provided by Hamsa Arabic Cafe and Restaurant
Thanks to the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for their support of this event.

May Ziadeh Salon and Book Pre-Launch
2026-05-31 09:00 - 10:30 | Virtual
Who was May Ziadeh (1886-1941) & why was she an important part of Arabic letters? An introduction to Ziadeh’s “Musings of a Young Woman.”

Come for the first of our May Ziadeh salons and a book pre-launch celebration of Musings of a Young Woman (forthcoming, ArabLit Books).
Join scholars, translators, editors, & enthusiasts to learn more about May Ziadeh, her writing, and her importance to the early twentieth century literary scene.
Join Dana Al Shahbari, a May Ziadeh scholar who wrote the introduction to the book; the book’s managing editor, Ibtihal Mahmood; one of our translators, the novelist Layla Alammar; and editor Mennan Salih. Emceed by ArabLit’s founding editor M Lynx Qualey.
Dana Al Shahbari is a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, specializing in the Arab Renaissance (Nahda), its intellectual history, and Arab women’s writing. Her research focuses on the recovery of May Ziadeh (1886–1941) through scholarship and archival work. She explores how Ziadeh’s writings that span journalistic essays, poetry, literary correspondence, and experimental prose, challenge dominant narratives of Arab modernity and offer new frameworks for understanding women’s intellectual production and rethinking questions of gender and literary authority. Dana holds both her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the American University of Beirut(AUB), where she also minored in Arabic and Near Eastern Languages. Her work has been published in both Arabic and English, including co-authoring 101 Arab Women Writers(Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre,2024) and contributing a chapter to Feminist Readings in Arab Intellectual History. Alongside her academic research, Dana is also interested in translation and public humanities.
Ibtihal Rida Mahmood is a writer, editor, translator, and poet. She is the translator and co-editor of Snow in Amman: An Anthology of Short Stories from Jordan (2015) and the English translator of Yassin al-Haj Saleh’s The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy (2017). Her essays, translations, and criticism have appeared in The Markaz Review, New Internationalist, Qantara, The Seattle Globalist, and Women Writers, Women’s Books. Her poetry and literary translations have been featured in international anthologies, including The Art of Being Human (2013), Premio Mondiale di Poesia Nosside (2014), and Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets (2025). She is a contributing editor at ArabLit. She also publishes the Substack newsletter Naked Shadows on a Black Wall.
Layla Alammar is an Assistant Professor at the American University of Kuwait. She earned a PhD in Arab women’s literature and literary trauma theory from Lancaster University and an MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. She is also a novelist and translator. Her debut novel, The Pact We Made (2019), was nominated for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award while Silence is a Sense (2021) was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She has written for The Guardian, LitHub, the Times Literary Supplement, ArabLit Quarterly, The New Arab, GQ Middle East, NewLines Magazine, and The Markaz Review.
Mennan Salih is a translator, language consultant, and editor; she is also the writer of The Arabic Pages. A PhD candidate at the University of Westminster, she researches metaphors in Arabic literature through a psycholinguistic lens. Mennan—who is originally from Cyprus—has a keen interest in both modern and ancient languages, and is currently studying the Old Babylonian variant of Akkadian. She holds a BA (Hons) in Arabic and Linguistics and an MA in Advanced Arabic.
M Lynx Qualey is the founding editor of ArabLit.

Hannah Moushabeck presents 'Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine'
2026-06-02 18:00 - 21:00 | Third Place Books – Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA, 98155, United States
A love letter to home, to family, and to persistent hope that transcends borders.
Third Place Books welcomes author Hannah Moushabeck to our Lake Forest Park store for a conversation about her picture book Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine: a moving, beautifully illustrated story of a family keeping their home alive in memory.
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!

Honoring Ghassan Kanafani
2026-07-08 | TBD
Join us to honor our martyr Ghassan Kanafani, the writer, artist and revolutionary who is a compass of our struggle. We will be studying his works, creating art and building community together. We look forward to seeing you there.
SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, July 8th.
LOCATION: TBD. Details to come.
Kanafani Lives! Palestine Lives!

Randa Tawil: 'Race in Transit: Tracing the Politics of Migration from Ottoman Syria through US Empire'
2026-07-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Third Place Books – Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States
The hope, struggle, and complexity of life on the move
Third Place Books welcomes University of Washington lecturer Randa Tawil to our Ravenna store for a conversation about her new book, Race in Transit: Tracing the Politics of Migration from Ottoman Syria through US Empire. Making migrants the agents of a world history that has too often relegated them to the sidelines, Race in Transit explores the social construction of race in the early twentieth century and its impacts on Syrian migrants to the United States. Maryam S. Griffin, author of Vehicles of Decolonization: Public Transit in the Palestinian West Bank, joins in conversation.

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!
***
Randa Tawil is a Palestinian-Lebanese researcher, writer, and lecturer at University of Washington in the Jackson School of International Studies. She holds a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University, and writes about migration, US empire, and the Middle East. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Margins, and Open Democracy, as well as scholarly journals.
Maryam S. Griffin is an associate professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at University of Washington, Bothell. Broadly, her work examines people’s ordinary movements, both physical and political, and how they confront state power in quotidian and spectacular ways. She is the author of Vehicles of Decolonization: Public Transit in the Palestinian West Bank, part of the Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality book series with Temple University Press, and the co-editor of We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel’s Critics.

A Conversation with Novelist Diana Abu-Jaber
2026-07-26 06:00 - 07:30 | Virtual
We explore the role of literature in navigating identity, memory, and cultural belonging.

Join us for a powerful online conversation with award-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber as we explore the role of literature in navigating identity, memory, and cultural belonging.
Through her acclaimed novels and memoirs, Abu-Jaber has carved a unique space in contemporary literature — weaving themes of heritage, displacement, and storytelling across borders. In this live panel, she will share her insights on writing between cultures, the nuances of Arab-American identity, and the enduring power of narrative to bridge personal and political landscapes.

Author Danny Ramadan: Crooked Teeth
2026-08-17 19:00 - 21:30 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Danny Ramadan, queer refugees advocate and author of The Foghorn Echoes, The Clothesline Swing, and Salma children’s series, visits for his new memoir, Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir, a singular achievement in which a master storyteller learns that his greatest story is his own.
Registration is not required, but helps us anticipate audience size. If you’d like to RSVP, please do so here!
“Writing this memoir is a betrayal.” So begins this electrifying personal account from Danny Ramadan, a celebrated novelist who has long enjoyed the shield his fiction provides. Now, to tell the story of his life, he must revisit dark corners of his past he’d rather forget and unearth memories of a city he can no longer return to.
Starting with his family’s humble beginnings in Damascus, he takes readers on an epic, border-crossing journey: to the city’s underground network of queer safe homes; to a clandestine party at a secluded villa in Cairo; through Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, a reckless hoax that threatens the safety of Syria’s LGBTQ+ community, and a traumatic six-week imprisonment; to beaches and sunsets with friends in Beirut; to an arrival in Vancouver that’s not as smooth as it promised to be; and ultimately to a life of hard-won comfort and love.
What emerges is a powerful refutation of the oversimplified refugee narrative—a book that holds space for joy alongside sorrow, for nuance and complicated ambivalences.
“An engrossing account of one queer man’s journey through a life filled with danger, yes, but also great joy. A beautiful read that adds nuance to the stories of so many refugees.” —Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author and LGBTQ+ refugees advocate. He is the author of The Foghorn Echoes, The Clothesline Swing, and the award-winning Salma children’s series. His work has won the Lambda Literary Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, and was longlisted for Canada Reads. His books are translated into multiple languages and celebrated worldwide. Since arriving in Canada, he has raised over $300,000 to support queer and trans refugees. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
