"Unruly Jewels - Neither Muslim Nor Jewish" by the Zay Initiative (online)
2022-10-11 20:00 - 21:00 (Asia/Dubai)
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, joins Dr Reem El Mutwalli & Salma Ahmad Caller for a Dialogue “Unruly Jewels – Neither Muslim Nor Jewish”

About this event

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay joins Dr Reem El Mutwalli & the founder of the Imaginarium postcard project, artist and art historian Salma Ahmad Caller for a dialogue on “Unruly Jewels – Neither Muslim Nor Jewish”
Looking at some photographs, postcards and jewels, Azoulay will question the investment of the French colonial project in the de-algerisation and de-arabisation of the Jews in Muslim countries. One of the signs of their “success” in turning the indigenous into “modern type” was the withdrawal of the Jews from wearing heavy jewels and clothing with gold thread embroidery, through the production of these gold threads and jewels was a craft Jews used to practice for centuries. The disappearance of the jewels from their bodies was not a simple change in mode, but rather a disruption of a world in which craft and craft making was essential for world building and for world maintenance, and was embedded in guilds that were part of social fabrics of mutual care.
OUR GUEST SPEAKERS:
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature (Brown University), film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include: Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008). Among her films: Un-documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder (2019), Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012). Among her exhibitions Errata (Fundació Tàpies, 2019, HKW, Berlin, 2020), and Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order, (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016).
Salma Ahmad Caller was born in Iraq to an Egyptian father and a British mother and grew up in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. She now lives in the UK. An artist, art historian and writer, Salma considers herself a disruptive body, a hybrid of cultures and faiths. Her work explores her mixed- race identity, cross-cultural experiences, text/image relationships and forms of embodiment, materiality and memory, drawing on personal intimate family histories and vulnerability as a way to destabilise larger narratives. Uncanny juxtapositions and hybrid forms are used to investigate how the private and political collide and intertwine, using techniques of collage, assemblage, drawing, watercolour, photography, projection, installation/sound and more recently film. Salma also writes art theory, poetry and creative non-fiction. Her theoretical background in research on the meanings of ornament in non-Western cultures through frameworks of anthropology of art and cognitive science/physiology, are used to decolonise and break down boundaries, categories, typologies and terminology that characterise hegemonic colonial and patriarchal formations. With a Masters in art history and art theory, and a background in medicine and pharmacology, and several years teaching cross-cultural ways of seeing via non-Western artefacts at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she now works as an independent artist and teacher.

Arab American and Muslim Representation
2022-10-12 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
We invite you to ParentChild+’s virtual series Windows, Mirrors & Doors, where children’s book authors, educators, and advocates will lead us in a compelling discussion on Arab American and Muslim representation in children’s literature. The discussion will shine a light on the impact representation has on the well-being and social-emotional development of Arab American and Muslim children. It will highlight the importance of all children and families learning about Arab Americans and the many continents, countries, cultures, and religions they represent; Muslim families and the many countries and cultures they represent; the importance of Arab and Muslim children seeing themselves in the books they encounter; the ways in which we can equip parents and caregivers to access these books and stories and share them with the children in their lives, and how we can all advocate for improvements in Arab American and Muslim representation.

The Evolution of Symbolism in Palestinian Embroidery (8 Week Series)
2022-10-13
“The Evolution of Palestinian Symbolism” is an 8-part art historical lecture series detailing the various stages of motif symbolism and ritual in Palestinian society, spanning hundreds of years into history. The motifs are divided into categories of ancient, traditional, curvilinear, contemporary and political. The primary objectives of this course are to; 1) understand the iconographical approach to studying art history and it’s limitations in Palestinian embroidery, 2) the evolution of motifs throughout time, 3) learning the evolutionary context of motifs throughout time, 4) the use of each symbol and the significance of its meaning in Palestinian culture, and 5) the contemporary context of Palestinian embroidery, and an appropriate way to use symbolism in your study.

The Road to Representation: Arab Americans in Office
2022-10-14 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
In-person at AANM
Free with RSVP
Register for in-person attendance | Register for virtual attendance
Arab American representation in public office positions has increased in recent years, reflective of the growing community. This panel features Arab Americans in a variety of governmental and public office positions, both in the spotlight and behind the scenes, as they work towards a present and future that includes the full participation of all Arab Americans. Join us to hear their personal stories and journeys along the road to representation.

Reviving The Jericho ‘Thobe Ubb’
2022-10-22 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Date/Time: October 22, 2-3:30pm EST
Format: Virtual Event
Fee: Sliding Scale $10 or $20
The SWANA Style Saturday Series is a lecture series focused on exploring the traditional dress of cultural communities living in SWANA (Southwest Asia & North Africa). The aim of this series is to bring awareness to styles that have generally been left out of the historical record, however have great historical origination stories. Our cultural memory must preserve this knowledge for the next generation.
Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited area in the world. Today, it is the last Palestinian city before crossing the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. Geological and geographic factors have contributed to its long history of survival and an ideal place for settlement, making it a source of envy and coveted possession for invaders who have seen Jericho as the key to controlling Palestine. In the oldest continuously inhabited place on earth, what is the oldest traditional dress worn by the residents? And, is it still being worn today?
Learn the answers to these questions, and more, at the next installment of SWANA Style Series, titled “Reviving The Jericho ‘Thobe Ubb’. Learn about Wafa’s most recent discovery of the Thobe Ubb at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a treasure that has yet to be identified in the museum’s catalogue.
Please note that you are welcome to register for the lecture and watch the recording at a later time, because it will be recorded and sent to all registrants within 24 hours of the live event. However, the recording will be available for a limited time.

Nubian Architect Menna Agha [afikra Conversations]
2022-10-28 07:00 - 08:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Dr. Menna Agha is an architect and researcher who has recently been coordinating the spatial justice agenda at the Flanders Architecture Institute in Belgium. She joins the Azrieli School to promote pedagogy and research in the newly established area of Design and Spatial Justice. Menna holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Antwerp, and a Master of Arts in Gender and Design from Köln International School of Design. In 2019/2020, she was the Spatial Justice Fellow and a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon. She is a third-generation displaced Fadicha Nubian, a legacy that infuses her research interests in race, gender, space, and territory. Among her publications are: Nubia still exists: The Utility of the Nostalgic Space; The Non-work of the Unimportant: The shadow economy of Nubian women in displacement villages; and Liminal Publics, Marginal Resistance.

"Madafeh": Hanan Awad, photographer, essayist (virtual)
2022-10-30 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Event Occurs Every Sunday-Register Once; Attend All.

The program begins at 12 Noon US EDT; 7:00 PM Palestine Time.
Please join us for a virtual session of open discussion about Palestinian topics.
Please click here to register for this event.
In 1948, the year of al-Nakba or “the catastrophe”, over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland through militarized displacement resulting in the depopulation and destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages. Each village has a unique story regarding the specifics of how it was attacked and how its inhabitants were forcibly expelled. For the most part, the villages were totally destroyed – leaving only a few that stand to this day. Ayn Hawd and Ayn Karem are these unique cases of villages escaping the brutal destruction that sought to erase the physical signs of the Palestinan presence throughout the region. While the houses and buildings of these two villages were left standing, the actual Palestinian inhabitants were displaced and are forbidden to return. The stories of Ayn Karem and Ayn Hud are critical for understanding the situation in Palestine as one of settler-colonialism.

SWANA Style Series: Revival of the Jericho Thobe Ubb
2022-11-05 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
The SWANA Style Saturday Series is a lecture series focused on exploring the traditional dress of cultural communities living in SWANA (Southwest Asia & North Africa). The aim of this series is to bring awareness to styles that have generally been left out of the historical record, however have great historical origination stories. Our cultural memory must preserve this knowledge for the next generation.
Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited area in the world. Today, it is the last Palestinian city before crossing the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. Geological and geographic factors have contributed to its long history of survival and an ideal place for settlement, making it a source of envy and coveted possession for invaders who have seen Jericho as the key to controlling Palestine. In the oldest continuously inhabited place on earth, what is the oldest traditional dress worn by the residents? And, is it still being worn today?
Learn the answers to these questions, and more, at the next installment of SWANA Style Series, titled “Reviving The Jericho ‘Thobe Ubb’. Learn about Wafa’s most recent discovery of the Thobe Ubb at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a treasure that has yet to be identified in the museum’s catalogue.
Please note that you are welcome to register for the lecture and watch the recording at a later time, because it will be recorded and sent to all registrants within 24 hours of the live event. However, the recording will be available for a limited time.

Afikra: Founder of Tatreez and Tea Wafa Ghnaim [Outline]
2022-12-14 07:00 - 08:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join us as we interview Wafa Ghnaim, who founded an educational arts initiative focused on the preservation, documentation and research of textiles in the SWANA region, on our afikra Outline series.

The Lives Along the Nile (5 series class)
2023-01-23 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Welcome to another series in attempting to better understand the Middle East and North Africa yet, this time we are traveling south to north with the Nile River. We will go on an expedition (no need for passport, inoculations or tents for camping or visas) from the origins of Nile to the Mediterranean Sea. We will read history books, journalists’ accounts and novelists describe the river and the inhabitants along its banks. Join us on this journey along the Nile River. According to the National Geographic: “The Nile River flows from south to north through eastern Africa. It begins in the rivers that flow into Lake Victoria (located in modern-day Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya), and empties into the Mediterranean Sea more than 6,600 kilometers (4,100 miles) to the north, making it one of the longest rivers in the world. The Nile River was critical to the development of ancient Egypt. In addition to Egypt, the Nile runs through or along the border of 10 other African countries, namely, Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Its three main tributaries are the White Nile, the Blue Nile, and the Atbara.”
Five Mondays: January 23, February 6 and 20, March 6 and 27 from 1 to 3 p.m. ET Online
1. 23rd January 2023: River of the Gods – Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the search for the source of the Nile by Candice Millard (9780385543101)
2. 6th February: The Black Nile by Dan Morrison (9780143119371)
3. 20th February: God Dies by the Nile by Nawal al Saadawy (9781783605965)
4. 6th March: Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz (9780385423335)
5. 27th March: Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (9780063139848)
AND/OR
The Fugitives by Jamal Mahjoub (9781838850821)

Continuous Trauma and Social Devastation: Gaza and Washington leaders in discussion on social trauma and healing
2023-01-26 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | St Marks Cathedral, 1245 Tenth Avenue East, Seattle, WA, 98102-4398, United States
The Gaza Strip’s visiting lead psychiatrist updates us in person on current conditions there with local leaders and audience questions and reflections on “glocal”social divisions building best ways forward together.

Trauma & Hope Tour “Continuous Trauma and Social Devastation – or Caring for ALL?"
2023-01-26 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | St Marks Cathedral, 1245 Tenth Avenue East, Seattle, WA, 98102-4398, United States
FREE

The Rachel Corrie Foundation is honored to be one of multiple co-sponsors of this Seattle event featuring Dr. Yassar Abu-Jamei, who has led the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme – a leading Palestinian non-governmental organization providing mental health services to the Gaza Strip – for fifteen difficult years. During this time, those in Gaza have suffered daily from an international blockade, and continuing military threats and raids by the Israeli army.

The event, organized by the Massachusetts-based Gaza Mental Health Foundation, will also feature the following local leaders speaking about social and racial disparity globally and in Washington State:

Imraan Siddiqi, Executive Director, Council of American-Islamic Relations (Washington Chapter)
The Honorable Damon Shadid, Seattle Municipal Court judge
Dr. Jonathan Kanter, Director, Center for the Science of Social Connection (University of Washington)
Dr. Brian Baird, psychologist, and U.S. Congressman for 12 year

In person and also on zoom: register for zoom: http://bit.ly/3k1Aflv

Who Can Speak on Palestine?
2023-01-30 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
The Foundation for Middle East Peace & Al Shabaka invite you to the first episode in our four-part series, Learning and Unlearning Palestine.
Who Can Speak on Palestine?
Monday, January 30th, 2023
12pm Eastern
featuring Nour Joudah (UC Berkeley), Dina Matar (SOAS, University of London), in conversation with Maha Nassar (University of Arizona)
RSVP Here
This conversation will examine the history and current reality of the erasure of the Palestinian narrative, the delegitimization of Palestinian voices in mainstream spaces, and possibilities for change.
Speakers:
Nour Joudah completed her PhD in Geography at UCLA. She is currently the UC Presidential Postdoctoral fellow at UC-Berkeley. Nour’s work examines mapping practices and indigenous survival and futures in settler states, highlighting how indigenous countermapping is a both cartographic and decolonial praxis.
Dina Matar is Professor of Political Communication at SOAS, University of London, where she is also chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies. Her teaching and research are informed by a non-Western centric approach to addressing communication and politics, with a particular focus on the marginal and the periphery. She is the author of What it Means to be Palestinian (2010), and co-author of The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (2014). She is co-editor of Narrating Conflict in the Middle East (2013) and Gaza as Metaphor (2016) and is currently co-editing a volume titled Producing Palestine with Helga Tawil-Souri.
Maha Nassar is an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, where she specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of the modern Arab world. Her award-winning book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017), examines how Palestinian intellectuals connected to global decolonization movements during the mid-twentieth century. She is working on her next book, a global history of Palestine’s people.

Tatreez Workshops and Lectures by Tatreez and Tea - Ongoing
2023-02-01 - 2023-04-02 | Virtual
Your instructor is author and scholar Wafa Ghnaim, founder of Tatreez & Tea!
Tatreez & Tea’s mission is to preserve Palestinian embroidery and storytelling traditions in the diaspora. Tatreez & Tea is the first of it’s kind. When Wafa first founded Tatreez & Tea in 2016, she was the only educator solely focused on Palestinian embroidery, traveling the US and the world. Now, new local initiatives, culture bearers, “tatreez circles”, and mentors are emerging from communities around the world like never before. The tatreez revolution has gained a beautiful momentum and now is the time to join.
Wafa’s goal in her educational classes are three-fold: educate students from art history and oral history perspectives that preserve the meanings, stories and symbolism of traditional Palestinian embroidery motifs; teach versatile skills that allow students to eventually produce large independent projects; encourage students to become creative and grow beyond simply abiding by traditional embroidery principles.
Click here for upcoming events!
https://www.tatreezandtea.com

Philanthropist Teresa Chahine [afikra Conversations]
2023-02-07 01:00 - 03:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Teresa is the inaugural Sheila and Ron ’92 Marcelo Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management. She is the author of “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship,” a twelve step framework for building impactful ventures in new and existing organizations. Dr. Chahine’s research focuses on developing tools to characterize and advance social and environmental determinants of health. She launched the first social entrepreneurship program in the context of public health, at Harvard University. She was also responsible for launching the first venture philanthropy organization in her home country of Lebanon, providing tailored financing and critical management support to social enterprises serving marginalized populations through education and job creation for youth and women.

“When We Were Arabs – Memory, Erasure and Cultural Connections” Workshop
2023-02-16 15:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Diverse expressions of historical memory persist and gain meaning despite nationalist projects to minimize diversity in pursuit of an imaginary homogeneity that in truth exists practically nowhere in the world. The fact that such attempts at erasure are responsible not only for cultural amnesia, but for denial of common cultural experiences that would foster acceptance instead of rejection. This workshop will place two works of historical memory into conversation. Coincidentally, two authors representing two culturally related but geographically distant societies gave their books the same title: When We Were Arabs to invoke that claim of identity (Cuando Fuimos Arabe). They are Emilio González Ferrín, University of Seville, and journalist Massoud Hayoun based in Los Angeles. This conversation, moderated by educator Dr. Rabiah Khalil, will explore the persistence of memory and affirm the value of recognizing shared roots and accepting the richness of our diversity.
This program is sponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, the Arab American National Museum and Montgomery College Office of Advancement and Community Engagement
This program is made possible by a Title VI grant from the United States Department of Education, which is funding a National Resource Center on the Middle East at Georgetown University, and by support from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown and the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
For more questions, e-mail Dave Serio at DSerio@accesscommunity.org

What's next for the right to boycott in America?
2023-03-02 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Thursday, March 2 at 1:00 pm Eastern.
This virtual gathering, co-sponsored by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Jewish Currents and Just Vision, will provide a unique opportunity to hear directly from Alan Leveritt, publisher of the Arkansas Times and protagonist in Boycott, together with his attorney, Brian Hauss, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). I will also be joined by Boycott protagonists Bahia Amawi, a speech therapist and plaintiff from Texas; Mikkel Jordahl, an attorney and plaintiff from Arizona; Dima Khalidi, a lawyer and the Executive Director of Palestine Legal; Lara Friedman, a researcher and the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace; and our very own, Julia Bacha, Just Vision‘s Creative Director and Director of Boycott.
This is an opportunity to be in community as we mark the worldwide online release of Boycott on the heels of the Supreme Court’s announcement earlier this week. We’re counting on you to bring your curiosities and questions, and to be part of the next phase of our campaign to bring attention to anti-boycott laws and their implications.
Please register here by Wednesday, March 1, and feel free to extend this invitation to your family, friends and community. Our shared work to protect the right to dissent continues, and we hope you can join us in this important conversation.

PANEL | Shocks & Aftershocks of the Turkey-Syria Earthquake
2023-03-02 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of Washington – Thomson Hall, 1911 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
The Middle East Center invites you to an evening roundtable on:
STRATEGIC ‘HOLLOWING OUT’: BUREAUCRATIC INSTITUTIONS, CONSOLIDATION OF POWER, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISASTER – Asli Cansunar, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Washington
ONE MAN MANY DISASTERS: WHAT IS NEXT FOR TURKEY? – Resat Kasaba, Professor & former Director, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
WHY DID THE EARTHQUAKE HAPPEN AND WHY WAS IT SO DESTRUCTIVE: A GEOLOGIC PERSPECTIVE ON TURKEY’S MAJOR EARTHQUAKE ZONES – Scott L. Montgomery, Geoscientist and Lecturer, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Affiliate Faculty, Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
LIFE AMIDST CUMULATIVE DISASTERS: REFUGEES AFTER EARTHQUAKE IN GAZIANTEP – Ayda Apa Pomeshikov, Ph.D. Candidate, Interdisciplinary Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Washington
MODERATED BY – Selim S. Kuru, Associate Professor, Director of Ottoman & Turkish Studies (TOS), Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, University of Washington
Thomson Hall – Rm 101

International Women's Day Artist Talk with Mary Hazboun
2023-03-08 09:00 - 10:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
March 8 is International Women’s Day, so join Museum of the Palestinian People in celebrating Palestinian women artists! This artist talk will feature Mary Hazboun, the Palestinian artist behind “The Art of Weeping,” a collection of 50+ original drawings currently on show at Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C.
About Mary:
Mary Hazboun is a multidisciplinary Chicago-based artist who practices “ The Art of Weeping” as an act of processing grief and somatic healing of bodies through drawing and singing. Mary’s work highlights the nuanced traumas of women and their resistance against different forms of oppression that is manifested in the military machine, patriarchal societies, and forced migrations. She uses art, ceremonies, and performance for emptying blocked emotions, opening internal space, and pouring in trauma-informed introspections as a form of healing. Mary was born and raised in the city of Bethlehem and moved to the U.S in 2004.
Tickets are by donation, and after reserving your spot you will receive a Zoom link to join the artist talk on March 8 at 12 p.m. Resilience Monthly Club members can use the code 1948 to attend this event for free.

Black SWANA Lit: Mizna Reading + DJ – An AWP Offsite Event [In-Person Only]
2023-03-09 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 2, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Northwest Film Forum and Mizna present an AWP offsite reading to mark the release of Mizna’s Black Takeover Issue, guest-edited by acclaimed poet Safia Elhillo. This collection of Black writing from the SWANA region and diaspora is a first-of-its-kind, and we’re celebrating its launch with a killer line-up of writers including Safia Elhillo and a DJ set by fab creative Ladin Awad.
This program is supported by National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, and Minnesota Center for Humanities.

Photography: Issues of culture and identity with Maha Alasaker
2023-03-10 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join Maha Alasaker a visual artist and a photographer, based in Kuwait.
She will discuss how through her artwork, she tries to gain a deeper understanding of herself while attempting to engage issues of culture and identity. Her curiosity centers around how a woman’s upbringing affects identity and self-worth.
Maha’s projects have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in New York City, London, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Marie Claire and Rolling Stone have featured her work.
In 2019 , Maha published her first photo book,“ Women of Kuwait”, which was then acquired by the Getty Research Institute and The Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .
Hosted by: Dr Becky Alexis Martin, Lecturer in Human Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University and an award-winning photographer.

**Please double check the start time on this event if you plan on attending. Thanks!

AWP Offsite: Glossing the Margins—A Bi-lingual Arabic-English Poetry Reading
2023-03-10 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
AWP Offsite: Glossing the Margins—A Bi-lingual Arabic-English Poetry Reading
Friday Mar 10 2023 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Join us for an evening of poetry in which the borders between languages fall away and only poetry remains. Featuring poets Deema Shehabi, Fady Joudah, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Lubna Safi, and Zeina Hashem Beck.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is the author of Water & Salt, winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award. She is the translator and curator of the Poems from Palestine series at the Baffler magazine. She is the winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, for her book Something About Living (U of Akron Press, 2024). Her second book of poems, Kaan & Her Sisters is forthcoming from Trio House Press in July, 2023.
Fady Joudah has published five collections of poems: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu; a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and, most recently, Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received the Arab American Book Award, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is an Editor-at-Large for Milkweed Editions. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.
Deema K. Shehabi is the author of Thirteen Departures From the Moon and co-editor with Beau Beausoleil of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received the Northern California Book Award’s NCBR Recognition Award. She is also co-author of Diaspo/Renga with Marilyn Hacker and the winner of the Nazim Hikmet poetry competition in 2018.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet and the author of, most recently, O, named a Best Book of the Year by Literary Hub and The New York Public Library. She’s the co-creator and co-host of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry produced by Sowt.
Lubna Safi is a poet, writer, and graduate student residing in California. Her poems and essays have been published in Guernica, The Journal, MIZNA, and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection, Your Blue and the Quiet Lament won the Walt McDonald First Book Prize in Poetry and is published by Texas Tech University Press

The Shape of Home Anthology Virtual Author Talk
2023-03-20 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join us to chat with several authors published within The Shape of Home anthology and learn how they came up with their story ideas, what their writing process is, and more!

Email rocyouth@clpvd.org for the Zoom link

Narrative w/ For Us, With Us, By Us - لنا، عنّا، معنا
2023-04-13 07:00 - 08:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
By For Us, With Us, By Us – لنا، عنّا، معنا
Farah, Nadia, Naïma and Nadia will be discussing how they interweave narratives from the SWANA region into their diverse practices.

Joan Maloof The Secrets of Trees at Town Hall
2023-04-18 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98101, United States
Standing in an old-growth forest, you can instinctively sense the ways it is different from forests shaped by humans. These ancient, undisturbed ecosystems are increasingly rare and largely misunderstood, but American environmentalist Joan Maloof knows these forests intimately and has been studying and writing about them for decades. In the newly revised and expanded edition of her book, Nature’s Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests, she continues to deepen our understanding of these extraordinary ecosystems.
Maloof brings together the scientific data we have about old-growth forests, drawing on diverse fields of study to explain the ecological differences among forests of various ages. She describes the life forms and relationships that make old-growth forests unique — from salamanders and micro-snails to plants that communicate through fungi — and reveals why human attempts to manage forests can never replicate nature’s sublime handiwork. She also sheds new light on the special role forests play in removing carbon from the atmosphere and shares what we know about the interplay between wildfires and ancient forests.
Joan Maloof, Ph.D., is a powerful spokesperson for our nation’s forests — sharing information about their extent and condition and encouraging their preservation. Maloof is the author of Nature’s Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests. She also founded the Old-Growth Forest Network, an organization that is creating a network of protected forests across the U.S. Maloof is a professor emeritus at Salisbury University where she taught Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies. She is the author and four books in addition to Nature’s Temples: Treepedia; The Living Forest; Among the Ancients; and Teaching the Trees.

*I’m guessing she’s Arab due to her last name but I could not confirm.

Inclusion Talk Series: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem
2023-04-25 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join Compass Family Services as we honor and commemorate Arab American Heritage Month (AAHM) with a seminar from author Moustafa Bayoumi.
Moustafa is the author of the critically acclaimed How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin), which won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction.

An Evening Celebrating Arab American Authors
2023-04-27 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
Join us on Thursday, April 27 at 6 p.m. ET on Zoom as we celebrate the vibrant Arab American creative community during Arab American Heritage Month with a panel of three phenomenal authors: Reem Assil, author of Arabiyya; Sarah Cypher, author of The Skin and Its Girl; and Malaka Gharib, author of It Won’t Always Be Like This.

The conversation will be moderated by Lana Barkawi, Executive & Artistic Director of Mizna, a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. Assil, Cypher, and Gharib will discuss their books—a cookbook, a novel, and a memoir—the ways we celebrate heritage, grappling with perception and misperception, and the varied homages to lineage, love, and resilience from across the diaspora.

When you register for your free ticket to this conversation, you will also have the option to buy any of the featured authors’ books from our independent bookstore partner, Moon Palace Books, based in Minneapolis, MN.

Sign up to reserve your spot today. We can’t wait to see you there.

A Two-Part Virtual Symposium Hosted by the Palestinian Feminist Collective
2023-04-29 - 2023-04-30 | Virtual
The PFC invites all our communities to a two-day virtual symposium honoring Palestinian Political Prisoners. The symposium centers the Palestinian concept and practice of sumoud.

Part I will address the historic and contemporary enactment of sumoud in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement with a special focus on organizing among Palestinian women prisoners featuring Milena Ansari, Dr. Lena Meari and Dr. Samah Saleh.

Part II features former Palestinian women prisoners who will provide live testimony that details the dehumanization of the Zionist settler-colonial and carceral structure and the various ways sumoud animated their resistance, resilience, and survival. The discussion features Dareen Tatour, Muna Qaddan, Shatha Odeh, Anagheem Awad, Elya Abuhijleh, Rasmea Odeh, and Nida Abubaker.

Register at: bit.ly/PFCPrisonersSymposium

This event is co-sponsored by:

Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association, AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Black Women Radicals, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Critical Resistance, Freedom Archives, International League of Peoples’ Struggle – ILPS US, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)- حركة الشباب الفلسطيني, Right to Education Campaign – Palestine حملة الحق في التعليم, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, @Solidarity Across Borders, and US Palestinian Community Network

The “Abraham Accords”: Implications for Human Rights, a Just Peace, and US Policy: online
2023-05-02 06:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
The “Abraham Accords”: Implications for Human Rights, a Just Peace, and US Policy
Tuesday May 2, 2023
9:00 AM – 1:00 PM ET
With the normalization of relations between Israel and some Arab countries moving at a relatively fast pace, and with the Abraham Accords having taken over a significant proportion of US policy conversations and priorities for the region, there is a great need to provide a detailed and objective assessment of this new policy direction and its potential impacts and implications.
Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) and the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) are hosting a half-day conference to discuss the implications of these agreements for human rights and democracy across the region, as well as for US policies and priorities, regional and global alliances, and the future of both peace and Palestinian human rights. The conference panels will also include an examination of the diplomatic, economic, military, and technological components of these newly established relations, the motivations of each of the countries involved, and an overall assessment of the future of the Abraham Accords.

Reconstructing the Ancient Nile and Human Interactions with the River: Zoom
2023-05-06 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
While many efforts to reconstruct the ancient Nile drainage system have been conducted in previous years, they have been confined primarily to small study areas, producing maps of fragmented sections of the ancient river. The position and dynamic nature of the entire river channel system remains undiscovered.
Such a poor understanding of the Nile history not only inhibits our ability to map archaeological sites accurately, but also to understand their significance within the wider landscape.
Using remote sensing, geophysical methodologies for ground truthing, and Egyptological research, our team has begun the process of mapping the ancient Nile south of Cairo.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Suzanne Onstine is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Memphis. She received her B.A in anthropology at the University of Arizona and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern civilizations at the University of Toronto.
