Adania Shibli in NYC next week
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012Adania Shibli, author of Touch and the newly released We Are All Equally Far from Love, will be at two events in New York next week, hosted by ArteEast.
On April 24, at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, at 7 pm, Shibli will participate in the “Gazan Writers’ Salon—Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online”:
ArteEast presents Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online, a public program at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, in which Palestinian writers will discuss how their work has been shaped and affected by the internet. In this discussion Somaya al Sousi and Fatena al Ghorra contextualize their work within the broader landscape of Palestinian literature online, while Adania Shibli (co-editor, Narrating Gaza) explores the way in which such platforms foster literary community and discourse.
The discussion will be moderated by Khalid Hadeed (Cornell University) and featuring academic discussant Helga Tawil Souri (NYU).
On April 25, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Shibli will be part of a salon discussing “From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again”
ArteEast will present From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again: Gazan Writers Salon, to present contemporary writing from Gaza to New York’s literary audiences. Through readings of both poetry and prose, the writers will offer a rare glimpse into the diverse emerging and established voices that make up the dynamic literary scene in this city.
In his ode to Gaza, Mahmoud Darwish links Gazan literary production with its unique history within Palestine as a land that has been repeatedly occupied by external forces and subjected to over two decades of sanctions, blockade and strikes: “We are unfair to her when we search for her poems. Let us not disfigure the beauty of Gaza. The most beautiful thing in her is that she is free of poetry at a time when the rest of us tried to gain victory with poems…”
Like Darwish’s poem “Silence for Gaza,” we see Palestinian writers of subsequent generations grapple with the personal and communal experiences of Gaza’s history of occupation, blockade and war.
Participants include Fatena al Ghorra, author of five books of poetry including The Sea is Still Behind Us (Gaza, 2002) and A Very Disturbing Woman (Egypt, 2003), Ellay (multiple editions), Betrayals of god…Multi Scenarios (multiple editions); Adania Shibli, co-editor of the online forum Narrating Gaza, will read from multi-genre writings from Narrating Gaza of other writers that explore the repercussions of the Gaza War; Soumaya Al Sousi has produced four poetry collections, including The First Sip of the Sea’s Chest (1998), Doors (2003), Lonely Alone (2005), and Idea, Void, White in a joint collection with the poet Hala El Sharouf (published by Dar Al-Adab, Beirut, 2005).
These should be two outstanding events—if you’re in in NYC, please do come by.
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