ArabishWay

The Ground and the Sky: Creative Writing Workshops for Youth with Ibtisam Barakat & Naomi Shihab Nye
2021-11-14 11:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
THIS is a TWO PART SERIES
2 p.m. ET Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021
AND
2 p.m. ET Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021
Online via Zoom
FREE with RSVP
What are we rooted in? What can we imagine? Come ready to open the doors of your imagination for your dreams to touch where no one has yet reached. Renowned writers Naomi Shihab Nye and Ibtisam Barakat will lead this two-part writing workshop for high school students – no experience necessary!
This online workshop series, taking place via Zoom, will help to envision, create and accomplish new greatness. The past is mapped out, but that map contains many mysteries, worth exploring, and the future needs a blueprint. Bring a blue-ink pen with you if you wish, for navigation of the great sea of ideas and possibilities. We are appreciating the past and going to the future, together!
Students who attend will receive a gifted copy of Naomi Shihab Nye’s 19 Varieties of Gazelle by mail (within the U.S.) after the workshop!
For questions, e-mail Kathryn Grabowski at KGrabowski@accesscommunity.org.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, is the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States, through the Poetry Foundation. She has worked all her life as a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities. Her most recent books are Everything Comes Next, Cast Away, The Tiny Journalist, which won both Texas poetry awards (Texas Institute of Letters and Writers League) and Voices in the Air – Poems for Listeners.
Ibtisam Barakat is a Palestinian American bilingual poet and author, and the 2020 Sheihk Zayed Book Award laureate of young people’s literature. SZBA, for the Arabic language, is comparable to the Nobel Prize, for the English language. Ibtisam is the founder of Write Your Life seminars that she has led for audiences of all ages around the world, in both English and Arabic. Her vision is a more representative human history that includes everyone’s stories in their own voices. Ibtisam’s memoirs about growing up in Palestine, Tasting the Sky, a Palestinian Childhood, and Balcony on the Moon, Coming of Age in Palestine, won multiple honors, including the International Reading Association’s Best Book Award, the Middle East Book Award, and the Arab American Book Award. Her most recent books include The Lilac Girl, SZBA 2020 winner, and The Jar that Became a Galaxy, title book for the National Reading Campaign of Palestine 2019. She has two new books forthcoming in 2021. www.ibtisambarakat.com

The Almond Blossom Knows Its Life Is Short: Poetry of Palestinian Women in Translation
2021-11-16 17:00 - 19:00, 2021-11-20 17:00 - 19:00
Description: In this class we will explore a selection of translated poetry by Palestinian women. How do these poets tend to loss? How do they engage with their interiors while living in varying states of siege, occupation, or exile? What are their obsessions? Which mythologies do they reject and which others do they remake? Together we’ll read across generations, including poems by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Asmaa’ Azaizeh, Ahlam Bisharat, Laila Al-Sa’ih, and Fadwa Touqan. Join us to reflect together on theme and structure; to encounter texts in the original Arabic alongside the translations; and to end with a writing prompt inspired by our exploration.
Format: Online via Zoom

Exploring Poetry through Performance Workshop with George Abraham and Fargo Tbakhi
2021-12-15 15:00 - 17:00
6 p.m. ET Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021
Exploring Poetry through Performance Workshop with George Abraham and Fargo Tbakhi
In-person at AANM Russell J. Ebeid Library & Resource Center OR virtual via Zoom
Purchase in-person tickets
Museum Members: $12
General Public: $15
Students: $10
OR register for FREE virtual attendance
Although performance strategies and techniques are not often taught within mainstream poetry spaces, they can offer unique modes of inspiration and revision for poets. This workshop will explore poets who use performance in dynamic ways, learning practical techniques and exercises for animating poems with performance.
Open to writers at all levels – we just ask that participants come with a piece they have already drafted and would like to expand with performance exercises. Participating writers will have the opportunity to perform their work at EVE — A Poetry Performance Project by Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham on Saturday, Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. ET.
This is a hybrid workshop. In-person participants will attend at the AANM Library and virtual participants will attend via Zoom. All AANM guests are required to show proof of full vaccination, remain masked, and fill out a health screening form upon check-in in order to attend this event.
For questions, e-mail Kathryn Grabowski at KGrabowski@accesscommunity.org.

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian American performance artist and writer. He is the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Taurus. He has received fellowships from Rhizome DC, VisArts, Desert Nights Rising Stars, Halcyon Arts Lab, Mosaic Theater, and RAWI. His writing appears in Foglifter, Mizna, Peach Mag, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, the Shallow Ends, Prolit, and select bags of Nomadic Grounds Coffee. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s Shuruq Festival, the Alwun House Monster’s Ball, Mosaic Theater, and has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, writer, and engineer who was born and raised on unceded Timucuan lands (Jacksonville, FL). His debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers, and recipient of fellowships from The Boston Foundation, and Kundiman. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Abraham is currently a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate in poetry at Northwestern University.

EVE — A Poetry Performance Project by Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham
2021-12-18 16:00 - 17:00
7 p.m. ET Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021
EVE — A Poetry Performance Project by Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham
In-person at The Annex @ AANM OR virtual via online livestream
FREE with RSVP
Register for in-person attendance OR Register for virtual attendance
Join us for an evening of poetry and performance art with Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham! This event will showcase work from the local community, featuring work composed in George and Fargo’s Exploring Poetry through Performance Workshop. Thereafter, Fargo and George will perform, for the first time ever, an excerpt from their residency project: EVE — A Palestinian Necropastoral, a re-imagining of Milton’s Paradise Lost through the lens of Palestinian liberation.
This is a hybrid performance. In-person participants will attend at The Annex @ AANM and virtual participants will attend via online livestream. All AANM guests are required to show proof of full vaccination, remain masked, and fill out a health screening form upon check-in in order to attend this event.
For questions, e-mail Kathryn Grabowski at KGrabowski@accesscommunity.org.

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian American performance artist and writer. He is the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Taurus. He has received fellowships from Rhizome DC, VisArts, Desert Nights Rising Stars, Halcyon Arts Lab, Mosaic Theater, and RAWI. His writing appears in Foglifter, Mizna, Peach Mag, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, the Shallow Ends, Prolit, and select bags of Nomadic Grounds Coffee. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s Shuruq Festival, the Alwun House Monster’s Ball, Mosaic Theater, and has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, writer, and engineer who was born and raised on unceded Timucuan lands (Jacksonville, FL). His debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers, and recipient of fellowships from The Boston Foundation, and Kundiman. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Abraham is currently a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate in poetry at Northwestern University.

Misna: The Experimental Issue Virtual Launch
2022-01-30 09:00 - 17:00
Event details

On Sunday, January 30, join Mizna in launching The Experimental Issue with TWENTY ONE AUTHORS.
Featured readers include Mays Albaik, Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman, Darius Atefat-Peckman, Hajjar Baban, Doris Bittar, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Mohammed El-Kurd, Tracy Fuad, Farah Kader, Magdeline Maher, Khashayar Mohammadi, Yasmine Rukia, hana roz, Trish Salah, Glenn Shaheen, Nadia Shihab, Fargo Tbakhi, Mohamed Tonsy, Sarah Sophia Yanni, Omar Zahzah + Issam Zineh.
This event takes place virtually at 11 am CT, RSVP required.
RSVP HERE

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman (she/her) is a bi-racial Muslim writer, historian, poet, and artist. Her first book of poetry “The Raven, The Bayou, & The Willow ” is forthcoming through FlowerSong Press Spring 2022. She is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow (2020), a Rad(ical) Poetry Fellow (2020), and a poet for the Houston Grand Opera & MFAH’s event “The Art of Intimacy.” (2019) She was nominated this year for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology. Her work can be found in (Art) WORDPEACE and Mixed Magazine, (Fiction) Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, (Poetry) Boundless 2021: The Anthology of the Rio Grande River Valley International Poetry Festival, and others.
Hajjar Baban is a Pakistan-born Afghan Kurdish Poet. A 2021 PD Soros Fellow and current MFA in Poetry candidate at the University of Virginia, she has poems appearing in BAHR Magazine and the Southeast Review. You can read her work here: hajjarbaban.com
Doris Bittar is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, photography, installation, video, sound and performance. Bittar participated with Gulf Labor in the Venice Biennale in 2015 and other international and national exhibits. She won the Alexandria, Egypt Biennial 2nd prize and various awards, grants and recognitions in the United States and abroad.
Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán is author of Archipiélagos; Antes y después del Bronx: Lenapehoking; and South Bronx Breathing Lessons. A Tulsa Artist Fellow and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is editor of Yellow Medicine Review’s international queer Indigenous issue; and co-editor of Movement Research Performance Journal’s Native dance/movement/performance issue.
Tracy Fuad is the author of about:blank, chosen by Claudia Rankine as the 2020 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize and published in 2021 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA Program and a 2021-22 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
Farah Kader is a New York-based public health analyst. She was a recipient of the 2017 Palestinian Youth Movement’s Ghassan Kanafani Writing Prize and a 2019 Hopwood Graduate Award for poetry. Kader’s work has been published in Mizna, Orion Magazine, Electric Literature, and Narrative Magazine.
Khashayar Mohammadi (He/They) is a queer, Iranian born, Toronto-based Poet, Writer and Translator. They are the winner of the Vallum Poetry Prize 2021 and author of four poetry Chapbooks. Their debut poetry collection “Me, You, Then Snow” is out with Gordon Hill Press.
Yasmine Rukia is a first generation Lebanese-American Shia experimental poet. Her work exploring the nexus between hyphens, breaths and beliefs can be found in the Black Warrior Review, Mizna, Cliterature, The Gordon Square Review, The Belt, Jaffat el-aqlam and others. She lives in Dearborn Michigan with her two sons.
Glenn Shaheen is the author of four books. He is the Executive Director of the Radius of Arab American Writers and teaches at Prairie View A&M University.
Fargo Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian performance artist, a Taurus, and a cool breeze. Find more at fargotbakhi.com.
Mohamed Tonsy is a queer Egyptian writer, ceramicist and a PhD graduate of Edinburgh University. His writing has recently appeared in Epoch Press’s ‘Transitions’ issue, e.i.i.i zine’s ‘Navel’ issue, is set to appear in Mizna’s unthemed Summer 2022 issue, and has been shortlisted for MFest’s 2021 Short Story Competition. His debut novel — You Must Believe in Spring — is set to be published by Hajar Press, late 2022.
Sarah Sophia Yanni is a Mexican-Egyptian writer, editor, and educator. She is the author of the chapbook ternura / tenderness (Bottlecap Press, 2019) and was a Finalist for BOMB Magazine’s 2020 Poetry Contest, Poetry Online’s 2021 Launch Prize, and the Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Contest. She currently serves as Managing Editor of Tiding House and holds a Faculty Fellowship at CalArts.
Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, independent scholar, and organizer of Lebanese-Palestinian descent whose creative, critical, political, academic, and journalistic writings have appeared in or are forthcoming from various publications including Narrative magazine, Mizna, FIYAH, Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye, Arab Studies Quarterly, Full Stop, and the New York Times. Several of Omar’s poems were featured in the anthology, Beside the City of Angels: An Anthology of Long Beach Poetry. In 2016, Omar’s chapbook 13 Almost Love Poems was released, and Omar’s chapbook, DEATH, is forthcoming from swallow::tale press. Omar is the Education and Advocacy Coordinator for Eyewitness Palestine as well as a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI.) Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist. He is author of the poetry collection Unceded Land (forthcoming summer 2022, Trio House Press) and the chapbook The Moment of Greatest Alienation (Ethel, 2021). His poems appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Guernica, and elsewhere. Find him at issamzineh.com or on Twitter @izineh.

The Water We Carry: Struggle, Daring, Dignity and Joy (virtual)
2022-03-05 14:00 - 16:00
International Women’s Month Poetry & Music with Claudia Castro Luna, Hilary Field, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Cindy Williams Gutiérrez, Deema Shehabi.
Five women – four poets and a classical guitarist come together to celebrate women’s poems and stories of struggle and joy. This virtual group reading and performance brings together distinct and distinguished poets reflecting an array of international backgrounds along with music, all in acknowledgement of this being International Women’s Month.
Going alphabetically, this should all include: Claudia Castro Luna is a Seattle/Duwamish Lands-based poet who is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, a recent Washington State Poet and Seattle’s first Civic Poet. Her originally being from El Salvador, ‘living in English and Spanish,’ informs her work, including the poetry collections This City, Killing Marías, and One River, A Thousand Voices, and a powerful new collection, Cipota Under the Moon, coming in April from Tia Chucha. Her prose is also in the anthology, There’s A Revolution Outside, My Love.
Hilary Field is an internationally known performing and recording artist who has garnered widespread praise for her work with classical guitar. Her debut album, Music of Spain and Latin America, won Classical Album of the Year, awarded by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. She has performed in festivals throughout the Americas and has taught at both Seattle Pacific University and Pacific Lutheran University.
**Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a Seattle-area-based poet, essayist, and translator who has read and been part of group readings at Elliott Bay numerous times in the past – including readings from the Arabic. Her first full collection of poems, Water & Salt (Red Hen Press), won the 2018 Washington State Book Award. She is also author of the chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, and Letters from the Interior. She has also received an Artist Trust fellowship and the 2019 Robert Watson Literary Prize, among other honors.
Portland poet, playwright, producer, and educator Cindy Williams Gutiérrez is the author, most recently, of Inlay with Nacre: The Names of Forgotten Women (WIllow), as well as the earlier poetry collection, the small claim of bones. She has received numerous awards and honors, and is cofounder of Los Porteños, Portland Latinx writers’ collective, and the Confluence Poets in the Methow Valley. Her newest stage work, IN THE NAME OF FORGOTTEN WOMEN, a choreopoem, opens at CoHo on March 25.
**Kuwait-born poet, teacher, editor, and activist Deema Shehabi, presently living in California, is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon (Press 53), and co-author with Marilyn Hacker of Diasp/renga: A Collaboration in Alternating Renga. She is also vice-president of the vital writers group, RAWI – Radius of Arab-American Writers.
This should be special: please join us!

Naomi Shihab Nye Online Workshop: I’m Packed! From Oman to Michigan
2022-03-22 16:00 - 17:30
One Tuesday: March 22 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST ONLINE

Price:

$30 Per Household

About the Workshop:
What is Home? To some it might look like a house with a metal roof. Some might see a kitchen with food cooking, while others might think about a place where they used to live. Whatever the answer – home is essential to the many ways we see ourselves. In this writing workshop, grandparents and grandchildren, families of all sorts, friends and even just you can get together and write about what home means to you. Naomi’s new book The Turtle of Michigan (sequel to Turtle of Oman) will guide the writing prompts, including the opportunity to share if you choose.
The book is included with the workshop
About the Book:
Award-winning author Naomi Shihab Nye’s highly anticipated sequel to The Turtle of Oman explores immigration, family, and what it means to feel at home. Carrying a suitcase and memories of Oman, Aref experiences the excitement and nervousness that accompanies moving to a new home. The Turtle of Michigan is a great choice for reading aloud and a must-have for younger middle grade readers.
One Tuesday: March 22 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. EST ONLINE

About the Author:
Naomi Shihab Nye is the current U.S. Young People’s Poet Laureate, anthologist and the acclaimed author of Habibi: A Novel and Sitti’s Secrets, a picture book, which was based on her own experiences visiting her beloved Sitti in Palestine. Her book 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has taught writing and worked in schools all over the world, including in Muscat, Oman. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.

Poetry Across Languages with Fady Joudah, Tomás Q. Morín, and Niina Pollari
2022-04-11 15:00 - 16:00
The New York Public Library’s World Literature Festival celebrates books and writers from around the world and reflects the languages spoken in our communities. Discover free author talks, resources, book recommendations, and more for all ages in world languages.
Join the Library as we welcome Fady Joudah, Tomás Q. Morín, and Niina Pollari in conversation in English in the panel “Poetry Across Languages”.
This event is ONLINE ONLY.
Register Here!

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 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. Photo credit © Cybele Knowles.
Tomás Q. Morín is the author of the collection of poems Machete and the forthcoming memoir Let Me Count the Ways, as well as the poetry collections Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He is co-editor with Mari L’Esperance of the anthology, Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine, and translator of The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda. He teaches at Rice University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Photo credit © Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon.
Niina Pollari is a poet and Finnish translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Path of Totality (Soft Skull 2022) and Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015), and the translator of Tytti Heikkinen’s The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal (Action Books 2012).
Join the staff of the Yorkville, Belmont and Bronx Library Center libraries for this exciting literary conversation.
Note: Program will be recorded.

Revolutionary Arab Women in Poetry: streaming online
2022-05-28 - 2022-06-01
This event features live readings from two incredible Arab-American poets Priscilla Wathington and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha with the theme of REVOLUTION.
The readings will be followed by a discussion moderated by Zeina Azzam.
This event would not be possible without the assistance and support of Summer Farah and the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI).

Zeina Hashem Beck (virtual)
2022-07-13 18:00 - 19:30
Much-praised Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck makes this welcome visit by virtual means to read from her newly published third full-length collection, O (Penguin Poets). Writing in Arabic and English, she cuts to the quick here, in form, range, breadth – and breath.
“O is so full of life, of music and passion for life. In ghazals, odes, revolution songs and invocations of O the world comes vividly alive: ‘I carry a name & many cities,’ writes Hashem Beck, as her poems unfold the abundance of our world. Abundance, yes: so much tenderness, so much passion in these pages: just one language can’t contain it all, so the poet gives us ‘Duets,’ joining Arabic and English in the same stanza. The lyricism is a vehicle of emotional impact … Hashem Beck’s prayer isn’t shy of calling for revolution, of asking ‘to occupy the streets, bring the tires, the sofas, the drums, the blaring cars.’ Zeina Hashem Beck’s prayer isn’t afraid of stories, of new music on your balconies. Listen. Her O brims with the world.” —Ilya Kaminsky.
“Western readers often consume books by international authors like perverse anthropologists, scanning for a word or phrase that buttresses their ill-informed preconceptions, cudgeling a writer’s meticulously woven lyric into vapid social generality. Zeina Hashem Beck’s O rebukes this tendency explicitly in an early poem: “I’m tired of metaphors about peace. // I prefer dark chocolate in the morning, / & a good window.” And then throughout the collection, she rebukes it with her truly undeniable poems—rhymes braid across multiple languages, intricate forms fracture under the weight of their subjects. In one unforgettable piece, a subtle incantation ends on the name of a flower that looses itself across the page like so many petals. Unforgettable, undeniable—these are the words I keep coming back to with O. Anyone who reads it in earnest will emerge better made.” —Kaveh Akbar.
Zeina Hashem Beck’s other collections include Louder Than Hearts, To Live in Autumn, and the chapbooks 3arabi Song and There Was and How Much There Was.

Virtually hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company.

(Live and In person) SHOP EVENTS STAFF PICKS ABOUT US MY ACCOUNT CONTACT Claire Schwartz, Gabrielle Bates, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
2022-08-17 19:00 | Open Books, 108 Cherry Street, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States
A Seattle visit and a remarkable new debut by New York-based poet Claire Schwartz helps occasion what would be an excellent evening of work here as she is joined by esteemed Seattle poets Gabrielle Bates and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. Claire Schwartz, who is poetry editor of Jewish Currents, has a compelling first book out from Graywolf, Civil Service.
“The power of this book is in its uncontrollable private will to imagine against the public failure of imagination. The poet dismembers our political reality into the double-edged lines, into the bare and ashamed symbols and silences. Brutal and coy, Claire Schwartz creates a scream out of irony and a rhythm out of the four corners of the page.”—Valzhyna Mort.
“We’ve all heard the cliché ‘poems are bombs.’ But Claire Schwartz’s incendiaries whisper hard truths and harder questions, beckoning us closer, seeping gently into our consciousness before exploding the passive and placid thinking that allow us to go about our ‘normal’ lives. Civil Service shines a bright light onto a dark world ruled by property, prisons, patriarchy, and profit.”—Robin D. G. Kelley.
Gabrielle Bates has her debut poetry collection, Judas Goat coming from Tin House Books in 2023, works at Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is most recently the Washington State Book Award winner of Water & Salt (Red Hen Press) and Arab in Newsland, winner of the Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize.
This reading has now been moved to our friends and colleagues at Open Books: A Poem Emporium.

New Third World Presents: Launch Party for Unceded Land by Issam Zineh
2022-08-20 10:00 - 11:30
Featuring George Abraham, Ruth Awad, Carolina Ebeid, Adele Elise Williams, and Issam Zineh.

About this event

Join us for a poetry reading and virtual celebration of highly anticipated debut collection from poet and scientist Issam Zineh – Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022) 🖤 Saturday, August 20 at 1pn Eastern 🖤
Featuring readings by George Abraham, Ruth Awad, Carolina Ebeid, Adele Elise Williams, and Issam Zineh.
Hosted by the New Third World Reading Series 🖤
__
This is a virtual event and will be hosted on Zoom. RSVP below to receive the Zoom link and reminder emails ahead of the event 🌹
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

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.

Jamal Gabobe presents 'The Path of Difference' at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park
2022-09-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Third Place Books – Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE #A101, Lake Forest Park, WA, 98155, United States
Third Place Books welcomes local poet Jamal Gabobe to our Lake Forest Park store! Gabobe will be discussing his third collection of poetry The Path of Difference. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required in advance.
Copies of The Path of Difference 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!

Benefit for the Palestine Writing Workshop with Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
2022-10-29 11:00 - 12:30 | Virtual
REGISTER NOW, www.mecaforpeace.org/lastleaf to hear the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat— on Saturday, October 29, 11am PT / 2pm ET — with her new book, “You Can Be the Last Leaf: Selected Poems”. She and Deema K. Shehabi will share poetry and conversation in this virtual event.
Booklist wrote about Maya’s new book, “Al-Hayyat’s latest devastating and courageous collection captures the precarious everyday lives of Palestinians with enormous empathy and glistening clarity.”

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is a Palestinian writer, storyteller, and mother based in occupied East Jerusalem. Each day she passes through Israeli checkpoints, like the infamous Qalandia checkpoint, to direct the Palestine Writing Workshop, one of MECA’s partner organizations. Maya and her team at the Palestine Writing Workshop have published award-winning Arabic children’s books and led hundreds of interactive workshops from Nablus to Silwan to Gaza for children, youth, librarians and parents on reading aloud, creative writing, and storytelling. Her work is grounded in the belief that art and literature can change lives and aims to improve Palestinian children’s literacy and also encourage their imaginations. She is a gifted storyteller who captures the attention of children of all ages (and adults too!).Maya also runs writing courses for former prisoners, helping them transform trauma into art.
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 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.

Please join us to learn more about Maya’s work and life in Palestine!

Online Ticket—Poetry Reading—Out of the Ordinary Conference
2022-12-04 22:00 - 23:00 | Virtual
This public poetry reading forms part of the programme of Out of the Ordinary: On Poetry and the World, a three day conference on poetry’s relationship to the extraordinary. This carbon-neutral event will be held at the University of Canberra over December 5th, 6th and 7th 2022. For all further info: https://www.ucpoetry2022.info/
READERS:, Paul Collis, Olena Kalytiak Davis and Omar Sakr
Omar Sakr is a poet and writer born in Western Sydney to Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants. He is the author of These Wild Houses (Cordite Books, 2017), and The Lost Arabs (University of Queensland Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is the first Arab-Australian Muslim to win this prestigious award. The Lost Arabs was also shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Literary Award, and the Colin Roderick Award; it has been released in the US and worldwide through Andrews McMeel Universal. In 2019, Omar was the recipient of the Edward Stanley Award for Poetry, and in 2020, the Woollahra Digital Literary Award for Poetry. His poems have been published in English, Arabic, and Spanish. Omar’s debut novel, Son of Sin (Affirm Press), was published in 2022.
http://omarsakr.com/

Growth: Open Mic w/ Hana Saad
2023-02-24 16:00 - 17:30
7 p.m. ET Friday, Feb. 24, 2023
Growth: Open Mic w/ Hana Saad
In-person at AANM
Free with RSVP | Register for Livestream
Please note: To share work at the Open Mic, you must attend in person. An online livestream is available for non-local residents to tune in as part of the audience only.

Join us for an Open Mic Night, hosted by AANM artist-in-residence Hana Saad! We are creating a space for writers and musicians to continue sharing their work. We invite you to reflect on the theme of Growth – both literally and figuratively. Prepare a three-minute story about your favorite plant, the ways the world has changed you, or a lamentation for the earth. Hana Saad will also share the poetry she’s created while in residency, about the flowers of the Beqaa Valley.

Black SWANA Lit: Mizna Reading + DJ – An AWP Offsite Event [In-Person Only]
2023-03-09 19:30 - 21:30 | 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.

AWP Offsite: Glossing the Margins—A Bi-lingual Arabic-English Poetry Reading
2023-03-10 19:00 - 20:00 | 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

AWP Seattle Offsite Reading
2023-03-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Cherry Street Coffee House (Pioneer Square), 700 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States
Join us at AWP Seattle for an offsite reading at Cherry Street Coffee House (700 1st Avenue location) on Friday, March 10, at 7 PM, featuring poets Gabrielle Bates, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Patrycja Humienik, Jason Koo, Eugenia Leigh, José Olivarez, imogen xtian smith and Dujie Tahat! Free and open to the public. Doors will open for the event at 6:30 PM and readings will begin at 7. Book signing to follow.

Between Spaces – An AWP Off Site Reading
2023-03-10 19:00 - 22:00 | Common AREA Maintenance, 2125 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA, 98121, United States
University of Washington Bothell MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics, Kelsey Street Press, Essay Press and Bellingham Review host a hybridisciplinary phonetic transference (an awp offsite reading) featuring Ally Ang, Kiran Bath, Steven Dunn, Valerie Hsiung, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Dennis James Sweeney, Andrea Abi-Karam and Keith S. Wilson.

Hassaniya Arabic Poetry by Saharawi poet Zaim Allal
2023-03-20 11:30 - 13:00 | Virtual
Part of the Late Winter Poetry Translation Workshops 2023 collection
Translating the work of Zaim Allal, a famous Saharawi poet who is living in a refugee camp in Algeria with Hamza Lakhal.

Poet Charif Shanahan with Luther Hughes and Jane Wong
2023-03-21 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Chicago poet Charif Shanahan visits Seattle on the occasion of his second published collection of poetry Trace Evidence. Two acclaimed local poets who have both read their poetry on Elliott Bay’s stage, Jane Wong and Luther Hughes, will join in the celebratory night of poetry.

Poetry Workshop on Arabic Poetry Forms
2023-04-11 17:30 - 19:00 | Virtual
Workshop Description
Depending how you say it, “ghazal” is either a gazelle or a type of poem. So if you really wanted to, you could write en-DEERing poetry with us! In honor of April’s commemoration as National Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage Month, this BrainTrust explores some traditional and contemporary forms and styles found in MENA and Arab American poetry.
Instructed by Nadia Alamah

Book Launch: Mona Kareem's 'I Will Not Fold These Maps'
2023-05-14 10:00 - 11:00 | Virtual
Join us for the launch of Mona Kareem’s poetry collection *I WILL NOT FOLD THESE MAPS*, with Mona Kareem, translator Sara Elkamel, editor Nashwa Nasreldin, and hosted by ArabLit’s M. Lynx Qualey. Co-organized by the Poetry Translation Centre and ArabLit, this will be an hour of brilliant poetry & vibrant discussion.

For more about the collection, and to pre-order, visit the Poetry Translation Centre website:
https://www.poetrytranslation.org/shop/i-will-not-fold-these-maps
And, for those attending the event, there is a special 10% discount through this link.
Mona Kareem is the author of three poetry collections. Her poetry has been translated into nine languages, and appeared (in English) in: POETRY, Poetry Northwest, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation, among others. She is a recipient of a 2021 literary grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Kareem holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and works as an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Washington University St. Louis. Her translations include Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within (nominated for a BTBA award), Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s Except for this Unseen Thread, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred.
Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist and translator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University, and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Elkamel’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Yale Review, and Gulf Coast, among others, and in the anthologies Best New Poets ‘20 & ‘22 and Best of the Net ‘20. She was named the winner of Redivider’s 2021 Blurred Genre Contest and the Tinderbox’s 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. Elkamel’s debut chapbook “Field of No Justice” was published by the African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books in 2021.
Nashwa Nasreldin is a writer, editor, and a translator of Arabic literature. She is the translator of the collaborative novel, Shatila Stories, from Peirene Press, and Talib al-Rifae’s novel Shadow of the Sun, which is forthcoming from Banipal Books. She is a contributing editor of ArabLit.org and ArabLit Quarterly, and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Kahlil Gibran ~ In Search of a Prophet
2023-05-17 18:30 - 19:30 | Virtual
This event commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the publication of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Join Paul-Gordon Chandler in conversation with Q&A about his new book, In Search of a Prophet: A Spiritual Journey with Kahlil Gibran, exploring the all-embracing spirituality of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese born Arab-American poet-artist, mystic and best-selling author of The Prophet.
In Search of a Prophet is a fascinating journey through the spiritual life of Kahlil Gibran. Paul-Gordon Chandler explores this beloved writer and artist, a mystic who sought to build bridges and tear down walls.
In Search of a Prophet is not a traditional biography, but a compelling spiritual journey through Gibran’s writings, art, and the places he lived. From his birthplace village high in the snowy mountains of Lebanon, Chandler leads us through his emigration to Boston, art training in Paris, career in New York, and to the far reaching places of influence his writings and art have traveled, from Cairo to Mexico City.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha with Claudia Castro Luna and Rachel Edelman at Elliott Bay Book Company
2023-09-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Poet and friend of the store Lena Khalaf Tuffaha returns for the launch of her latest collection, Kaan and Her Sisters. Fellow poets Claudia Castro Luna and Rachel Edelman will join her for the reading.
Kaan and Her Sisters illuminates the work of grief and survival, the sordid legacies of official historical record and the liberatory practice of intimate narration. Tuffaha writes in the liminal space between languages, personifying Arabic verbs who guide the reader through a “history hurtling into the future.” Kaan and Her Sisters centers character of the Arabic teacher, Miss Sahar, whose progressive displacements from Palestine and across Arab cities unfold in epistles, refashioned songs, and glimpses into the interiors of her lost home. In these disclosures, a study of time and a record of resistance to erasure emerges, and at its heart, the women who keep intergenerational memory. “Our mothers miraculous, persevering./No maps are new to the ancestors.”
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 available now from Trio House Press.
Claudia Castro Luna has been an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow, the Washington State Poet Laureate, and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet. She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon; One River, A Thousand Voices; the Pushcart nominated Killing Marías, shortlisted for the Washington State 2018 Book Award in poetry; and the chapbook This City. Her most recent nonfiction can be found in the anthology There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis. Born in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981. Living in English and Spanish, Claudia writes and teaches in Seattle on unceded Duwamish lands where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.
Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet raised in Memphis, TN whose writing explores the creative work of diasporic living. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, The Seventh Wave, West Branch, and many other journals, and she has received material support from the Academy of American Poets, the University of Washington, Mineral School, Crosstown Arts, and Tin House. She teaches Language Arts in the Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic, and pedagogical practice. Her debut book, Dear Memphis, will be published by River River Books in January 2024.

Palestine Writes Conference (in Philadelphia)
2023-09-22 - 2023-09-24
Palestine Writes is the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists. Born from the pervasive exclusion from or tokenization of Palestinian voices in mainstream literary institutions, Palestine Writes brings Palestinian cultural workers from all parts of Historic Palestine and our exiled Diaspora together with peers from other marginalized groups in the United States.

Family Dinner: Palestinian Poetry Feast
2023-10-27 19:00 - 21:00 | the Pantry, 1417 NW 70th Street, Seattle, WA, 98117
Join us for a dinner where we do all the cooking! Each month we open the doors between our classrooms and seat 40 guests for a five-course family-style feast, featuring all the ingredients we’re excited about. And this October we’re hosting another very special dinner, with Nadia Tommalieh taking the lead. We’re excited to welcome local poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha to celebrate her new book “Kaan and Her Sisters” with a menu inspired by her writing. This book of poems is about grief, survival, displacement, and intergenerational memory, following a teacher of Arabic from her origins in Palestine to the cities of the Arab world. It’s a perfect pairing for Nadia’s cooking, which is itself powerfully informed by memories of Palestine — we can’t wait to taste what comes from this conversation. Pricing includes tip, a wine pairing with each savory course, tea or coffee with dessert, and a signed copy of “Kaan and Her Sisters”.
