ArabishWay

Workshops 4 Gaza: Cryptids and Creatures: Mythology in Poetry
2025-10-04 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
What role do cryptids and creatures like the Minotaur, the Mapinguari, or the Little Mermaid play in a poem? What do they allow writers to communicate about the myriad costs of being in this world characterized by colonial violence and slavery?
This workshop engages works by poets like Traci Brimhall, Natalie Diaz, and Summer Farah, whose mythical creatures unsettle understandings of loneliness, intimacy, sacrifice, and our relationships between past and present.
This will be an interactive space, where participants will write and share poems as cryptozoologists, architects, and memory workers. This workshop benefits the Sameer Project’s North Gaza campaign.
Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found at @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.

She Stands With Gaza: Poetry Reading
2025-10-25 11:00 - 13:00 | Douglas Truth – Seattle Public Library, 2300 E. Yesler Way, Seattle, WA, 98122
She Stands With Gaza
West coast (Turtle Island) feminist activists welcome you to join us as we hold a poetry reading and solidarity event with Gaza.
Indigenous two-spirit poet Chrystos will be reading her poems from visiting in Palestine.
We will present the work of Nima Hasan, the Gazan poet whose new collection I Bequeath Life to You, for We Die without Life Knowing Us: Nima Hasan Writing from the Ends of the Homeland has recently been translated into English.
Seba Abudaqa & Tom Kellner will speak about the material needs of women in Gaza. and the work that Clean Shelter is doing. to provide water and sanitary solutions to thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
Last but not least, Dominique Christina will join us virtually to read some of her work.
We would love to have you joining us for a day of beautiful poetry as we come together to show our solidarity with the people of Palestine.
I Bequeath Life to You, for We Die without Life Knowing Us: Nima Hasan Writing from the Ends of the Homeland. Compiled and edited by Rania Jawad, translated by Malaka Shwaikh, Published by Arablit, july 2025
Cosponsors: Fertile Ground, Communities that Protect and Resist (CPR), Blue Earth Defense (BED) and Vancouver Women In Black for Justice & Peace (WIB YVR)

Seattle Arts & Lectures Youth Poetry Reading
2025-12-12 19:00 - 20:00 | Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, 98122, United States
Join us for a celebratory poetry reading featuring SAL’s talented Youth Poetry Fellows. This reading marks the end of the program, and you are invited to come celebrate their genius with us!

Registration is not required, but helps us anticipate audience size. If you’d like to RSVP, please do so here!
About SAL’s Youth Poetry Fellowship (YPF):
The Youth Poetry Fellowship serves a cohort of young writers committed to poetry, performance, civic and community engagement, education, and equity across the Puget Sound region. Over the course of the school year, fellows meet regularly for workshops with the Youth Poetry Fellowship mentors. Fellows also have numerous public opportunities to share their voices, leadership, and love of Seattle throughout the course of the year. One of the fellows serves as the Youth Poet Laureate and writes a poetry collection published by Poetry NW Editions.
Ahsenti Alfedil (she/her) is a first-generation American of Ethio-Sudanese descent and a student at the Bush School. A multidisciplinary Piscean, she moves fluidly between poetry, acrylic/oil painting, and movement—always led by curiosity and feeling. When not overwhelmed by her academic workload, she finds joy in braiding hair, spending hours adorning herself and loved ones in henna, skating to her favorite playlists, and research as a leisure activity. As a writer, Ahsenti turns most often to poetry. Her work shows resistance to categorization because she follows her intrigue; the fleeting moments that spark inspiration to create. Through her writing, she hopes to make space for those navigating layered identities, vulnerability, and for stories that make people feel seen in their most intricate and unspoken parts.
Nadia Najam is a senior at Liberty High School in Renton, Washington. She finds joy in reading any good book she can get her hands on and spending time in nature. Through YPF, Nadia hopes to grow more confident in sharing her writing with the world and to challenge herself to explore new themes and styles in her poetry.
and more.

Singing Seattle: A Reading and Celebration
2026-04-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Singing Seattle: A Reading and Celebration
Three authors read poetry and creative nonfiction that speaks to our moment, followed by a Q&A and book signing. Samina Najmi reads from her debut memoir-in-essays Sing Me A Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha from her award-winning poetry collection Something About Living, and Kalehua Kim from her debut poetry collection Mele. The readings will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.
Free admission to this event is made possible with support from 4Culture.

Samina Najmi
Samina Najmi is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published Oct 1 by Trio House Press. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writers’ five creative nonfiction debuts of the year. Samina is enrolled part-time in Fresno State’s MFA program in creative nonfiction, and this is keeping her humble. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina has lived in Fresno since 2006 and watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. Her most recent book, Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), was listed as a 2025 notable book by the American Library Association, and was winner of the 2024 National Book Award, the 2025 Washington State Book Award, and the 2025 Arab American Book Award. Something About Living will be published by the 87Press in the UK and Ireland, where it is a finalist for the PEN Heaney Prize. She is also the author of Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House, 2023), finalist for the Firecracker Prize, and Water & Salt (Red Hen, 2017), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award. Tuffaha’s writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Nation, Poets.org, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion and We Call to the Eye and the Night. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024, she was a guest editor for Words Without Borders where she curated the series Against Silence. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com

Kalehua Kim
Kalehua Kim is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese descent, her multicultural background informs much of her work. A 2023 winner of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Calyx, and ‘Ōiwi, A Native Hawaiian Journal. As a recipient of the 2024 Trio House Press Editor’s Choice Prize, her first collection of poems, Mele, was released byTrio House in 2025.
