Palestine Writes Program 2020

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

PALESTINEWRITES.ORG

@PALESTINEWRITES

#PALESTINEWRITES

December 2–6, 2020

Palestine Writes Literature Festival

Cover art by Malak Mattar Palestinian Frida, 2019 Acrylic on canvas

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FRINGE22 STUDIO DESIGNED THIS BOOK. FRINGE22 thrives on maintaining our mission of “Projects with Purpose”. Our focus on aligning ourselves along clients with vision, made way for our life’s works to be on a path of fulfillment. We embrace our cultural diversities while pursuing a deeper understanding of the world.

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FRINGE22.COM FESTIVAL MARCH – 29, LITERATURE 2020 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY palestine27writes

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LETTER FROM CO-CHAIRS

ABOUT & ORGANIZERS

PARTICIPANTS

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PROGRAM

ART EXHIBIT

THANK YOU

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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A letter from the co-chairs We, Palestinians, form an ancient society from a fabled land. Our culture is rich with distinct songs, designs, foods, literature, dances, customs, habits, and artistry in all forms. Our heritage reaches deep into the past, before time was shaped for a calendar. It is no wonder so many throughout history had coveted and tried to appropriate our lives. Zionist colonization of Palestine could not have been possible without the perversion of narrative, or the muting of our indigenous voices and theft of our story. It follows that liberation entails the decolonization of that heritage bequeathed to us by our ancestors and by the land itself. I believe that our stories and culture are the final frontiers that our colonizers are actively trying to steal, whether it’s falafel, tatreez, or indigeneity in general. It is up to us to protect our thaqafeh, to expand the landscape of our cultural productions, to support emerging writers, and leave an unavoidable, unmistakably Palestinian literary and artistic terrain that the world cannot ignore, even as the land itself is being stolen from beneath our feet by foreign interlopers.

Palestine Writes Literature Festival aims to be a part of this endeavor, growing with time in size and scope. But we can only do that with your support. So we ask that you attend the sessions we labored to create. Listen to our writers, artists, and scholars speak. Buy and read their books. Uplift them.

Creating this festival has been a labor of love, years in the making. The challenges we faced were tremendous, particularly as we had to cancel what had shaped up to be a spectacular festival in New York City, unfortunately just around the time the pandemic hit. But we regrouped and recreated. We are grateful to all who supported and believed in us, who stuck with us through all the turbulence, who agreed to participate, who bought and kept their tickets, and to all who will attend.

We love you. And we ask your forgiveness in advance for any shortcomings or inadvertent omissions. We promise to always try to do and be better with your help.

Sincerely, Susan Abulhawa Novelist

‫سوزان أبو الهوى‬

It has been an honor to work with so many remarkable and remarkably committed people on Palestine Writes. The group effort to make this Festival happen through a number of obstacles has been truly inspiring.

This Festival grew out of the dedication of many Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists, and the commitment of groups like USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) among others.

Thanks also to everyone on the Palestine Writes Organizing Committee. They are: Mohammed Al-Haj, Aya El-Zinati; Lama Amr; Jacqueline Berry; Ayah El-Fahwami; Susan Muaddi Darraj; Daoud Ghannam; Mortada Gzar; Zaha Hassan; Anas Herzallah; Ahmed Mansour; Rima Najjar Merriman; Adam Miyashiro; David Palumbo-Liu; Andrew Ross; Faisal Saleh; Malini Johar Schueller; Neena Beena; Lara Alsoudani Weeks.

We hope the Festival brings you joy.

Sincerely, Bill V. Mullen ‫بيل مولني‬ Writer & Activist

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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Palestine Writes brings together writers, artists, publishers, activists, booksellers, & scholars to hold conversations about art, literature, & the intersections between culture, struggle, power & politics.

The common thread united all participants is the love of books and support of justice for Palestine. Our festival honors the many historic personalities who have walked this path before us, and showcases living voices celebrating Palestinian life, devoted to the belief that art challenges repression and creates bonds between Palestine and the rest of the world.

Palestine Writes will highlight the richness of Palestinian art and literature for a global audience who may not have had the opportunity to experience this work due to lack of linguistic access, the severe restrictions on movement of Palestinians, and the censorship and repression of Palestinian speech in the US.

Organizers

Susan Abulhawa

Bill V. Mullen

Susan Muaddi Darraj

Adam Miyashiro

Rima Najjar

Andrew Ross

Jacqueline Berry

Lama Amr

Faisal Saleh

Ahmed Mansour

Ayah El-Fahmawi

Neena Beena

Daoud Ghannam

Anas Herzallah

Zaha Hassan

Lara Alsoudani Weeks

Aya Al-Zinati

Mohammed Alhaj

Mortada Gzar

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

Malini Johar Schueller David Palumbo-Liu

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Encouraging Palestine refugee-youth to become agents of change through exploring their ideas and aspirations in educational pursuits, and amplifying the cause of Palestine refugees to communities around the world.

Learning for the empowerment and advancement of paLestinians (LEAP) is a grassroots volunteer-run educational empowerment program dedicated to nurturing the intellectual growth and creative curiosity of Palestine refugee-youth in Lebanon.

LEAP provides various educational projects and services to increase student access and opportunities.

Now marking its tenth year, LEAP has made a positive impact on over 3,800 Palestine refugee-students, and more than 250 volunteers.

Simultaneously, LEAP aims to raise awareness about the issue of Palestine refugees: the longestlasting refugee crisis and largest refugee population in the world.

Donate Today

As a volunteer-run grassroots program, LEAP can only thrive through the support of our donors & allies.

Will you make a generous donation today to support the creative and intellectual growth of Palestine refugee-youth in Lebanon?

leap-program.org/donate

Learning for the Empowerment & Advancement of Palestinians Facebook Instagram e-mail website

LEAPprogram48 leapprogram info@leap-program.org www.leap-program.org

ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS MAY – AUGUST 2021

Special thanks to Maira Abid, Amal Lashari, and the entire team at vFairs for their patience, guidance, and skills in creating the beautiful and interactive virtual environment of this festival.

Automation and the Future of Work by Aaron Benanav

A special thank you to RM Lingo for providing simultaneous interpretation for the entire festival.

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Participants Samer Abboud

‫سامر عبود‬

Samer Abboud is Associate Professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University. His current teaching and research interests are centered around the politics of memory making in Syria and the Middle East. Abboud is the author of Syria, a comprehensive analysis of the nation’s descent into civil war.

LITERARY FESTIVALS SUCH AS PALESTINE WRITES REMIND US OF THE POWER OF STORIES TO INSTILL HOPE IN THIS WORLD AND TO HELP US CONFRONT INJUSTICE AND INEQUALITY IN ALL ITS FORMS.”

Rabab Abdulhadi

‫رابب عبد الهادي‬

Rabab Abdulhadi (PhD) is founding Director/Senior scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program. Before joining SFSU, she served as the first Director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. A co-founding Editorial Board member of the Islamophobia Studies Journal, She co-authored Mobilizing Democracy: Changing US Policy in the Middle East and co-edited Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging, winner of the 2012 Arab American Non-Fiction Book Award; a special issue of MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies; and American Quarterly’s forum on “Palestine and American Studies.”

George Abraham

‫جورج إبراهمي‬

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian american poet from Jacksonville, FL. They are the author of the debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and The Boston Foundation. Their writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, West Branch, Mizna, and elsewhere. He is currently based in Somerville, MA, where he is a Bioengineering PhD candidate at Harvard University, and teaches in Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College.

Susan Abulhawa

‫سوزان أبو الهوى‬

Susan Abulhawa is a novelist, poet, and activist. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, was a groundbreaking achievement in anglophile Palestinian literature. It became an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages, and made abulhawa one of the most widely read Arab authors in the world. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, likewise achieved critical acclaim and was translated into 20 languages. Her most recent novel, Against The Loveless World, was published in August this year by Simon & Schuster. Other works by abulhawa include a poetry collection entitled My Voice Sought The Wind and numerous anthology contributions. She is a member of the organizing collective for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and she is a member of Workers World Party. palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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Rami Abu Shehab

‫رامي أبو هشاب‬

Rami Abu Shehab is a Palestinian poet and critic. He was born in Jordan in 1974 and lived part of his childhood in Kuwait. Rami, specialized in literary criticism, cultural studies and post-colonial discourse. He currently works as a lecturer in Qatar university. He received the Sheikh Zayed award (2014). He has published more than eight books. Recently Rami issued two poetry collections. The most recent, published in 2019, is entitled: I am from Palestine. He writes a weekly article in AlQuds Al-Arabi newspaper since 2014, where he focuses on issues of the diaspora, refugees and narratives. In addition to reviews on cinema.

Rami, participated in many conferences and seminars in the Universities of Qatar, Cambridge, Oxford, and in many countries such as the UAE, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Bahrain, Greece and others. He was also the member of jury in many literary competitions, such as the Al Multaqa prize for Short Stories at the American University of the Middle East (AUM) in Kuwait 2019.

Salman Abu Sitta

‫سلمان أبو ستة‬

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta is Founder and President of Palestine Land Society, London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine’s land and People. Author of several books on Palestine including the compendium Atlas of Palestine 1917- 1966, English and Arabic editions, the Atlas of the Return Journey, the Atlas of Palestine 18711877 and Mapping my Return: A Palestinian Memoir (in English and Italian), the first Nakba memoir in English for southern Palestine. He wrote over 400 papers and articles on the Palestinian refugees, the Right of Return, history of al Nakba and human rights.

Atef Alshaer

‫عاطف الشاعر‬

Atef Alshaer is a Senior Lecturer in Arabic and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster. He was educated at Birzeit University in Palestine and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he obtained his PhD and taught for a number of years. He is the author of several publications in the fields of language, literature and politics, including Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World, The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (with Dina Matar and Lina Khatib), A Map of Absence: An Anthology of Palestinian Writing on the Nakba, Love and Poetry in the Middle East (editor) and Language and National Identity in Palestine: Representations of Power and Resistance in Gaza, both forthcoming. Alshaer regularly contributes to academic and media outlets, including the BBC, Independent, I-Newspaper, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, and Radio Monocle.

Dunya Alwan

‫دونيا علوان‬

Dunya Alwan is a community based architectural designer, cultural worker, and educator. She is a co-founder of the International Women’s Peace Service and Birthright Unplugged/Re-Plugged both in Palestine. She is a co-founder of Street Cred, a guerilla public art and culture jamming collective whose work has been installed, distributed, and exhibited internationally. Dunya’s recent architectural work includes designing Critical Resistances’ newest home, teaching architecture at San Quinten Prison, co-founding the E. 12th Street Coalition agitating for and designing affordable housing on Oakland’s public lands, and being on the architectural team for Homefulness a project that supports under-housed and formerly homeless people to design and build their own housing. Dunya is also on a mural crew at San Quentin Prison creating much more than murals.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Hala Alyan

‫هالة عليان‬

Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Guernica and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Salt Houses, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017, and was the winner of the Arab American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Her latest poetry collection, The Twenty-Ninth Year, was recently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She lives in Brooklyn.

Suad Amiry

‫سعاد عمريي‬

Suad Amiry is a conservation architect and a writer. She is the founder of RIWAQ: Centre of Architectural Conservation, Ramallah, Palestine. Amiry taught architecture at Jordan and Birzeit University. She is the author of numerous books on Architecture.

Amiry is also the author of the acclaimed memoirs “Sharon and My Mother-in-Law,” which received Italy’s renounced literary Awards: Via Reggio (2004). She is the author of numerous non-fiction books including: “Menopausal Palestine”, “Nothing to Lose But Your Life: an 18 hour Journey with Murad”, and “Golda Slept Here”. Amiry’s latest book “My Damascus” has been published in Italian and Arabic and will be published in English in the US by interlink Spring 2021.

Zaina Arafat

‫زينة عرفات‬

Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, was selected as an Indie Next Pick for June, and has received acclaim from O Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR and Good Morning America. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including Granta, The New York Times, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, VICE, BuzzFeed, Guernica and The Atlantic. She holds an MFA from Iowa and an MA from Columbia. Zaina was selected as a 2020 Champion of Pride by The Advocate, and was awarded the 2018 Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship from Jack Jones Literary Arts. She teaches writing at Long Island University and the School of the New York Times, and is currently working on an essay collection.

Hanan Ashrawi

‫حنان عرشاوي‬

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian leader, legislator, author, activist, mother and scholar. Her service includes: Member of the Leadership Committee and official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace process, beginning with the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991; the Palestinian Authority Minister of Higher Education and Research (from 1996); Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Birzeit University and head of its Legal Aid Committee (mid-1970s); Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem (elected in 1996 and re-elected for the “Third Way” bloc ticket in 2006); The first woman to hold a seat in the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (elected in 2009 and in 2018): Founder of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (1994), of MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (1998), and the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN, 1999).

Ashrawi serves on the advisory and international boards of several global, regional and local organizations dealing with a variety of issues including human rights, women’s rights, policy formation, peacemaking, and nation-building. She is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the distinguished French decoration, “d’Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur”; Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation; Sydney Peace Prize; Olof Palme Prize; International Women of Hope “Bread and Roses”; Defender of Democracy Award – Parliamentarians for Global Action; the 50 Women of the Century; Jane Addams International Women’s Leadership Award; Pearl S. Buck Foundation Women’s Award; Pio Manzu Gold Medal Peace Award; Marissa Bellisario International Peace Award; and eleven honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Arab World. She is the author of several books, most notably This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995).

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‫سعد عطشان‬

Sa’ed Atshan

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan is an Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He is spending the 2020–2021 academic year as a Visiting Professor of Anthropology and Visiting Scholar in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He earned a Joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies and an MA in Social Anthropology from Harvard University, and a Master in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. He received his BA from Swarthmore. He has two books Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020) and the co-authored (with Katharina Galor) The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020).

Atshan is also a Palestinian, Quaker, and LGBTQ human rights activist.

Sophia Azeb

‫سوفيا عازب‬

Sophia Azeb is an assistant professor of Black studies in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. Her current book project, Another Country: Constellations of Blackness in Afro-Arab Cultural Expression, examines how Blackness and Black identity is variously translated, mobilized, circulated, and contested by African American, Afro-Caribbean, African, and Afro-Arab cultural and political figures in North Africa and Europe in the twentieth century. She is a regular contributor to The Funambulist magazine.

Ibtisam Azem

THE PALESTINE WRITES FESTIVAL OFFERS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR FREEDOM DREAMERS TO COME TOGETHER AND COLLECTIVELY IMAGINE DECOLONIZATION AS IT MUST BE: A FUTURE-ORIENTED DISRUPTION OF THE ENTIRE ORDER OF THE WORLD.”

‫إبتسام عازم‬

Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian short story writer, novelist, and journalist, based in New York.

She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in 1948. She is a senior correspondent for the Arabic daily al-Araby al-Jadeed. She is co-editor at Jadaliyya e-zine. Ibtisam Azem has published two novels in Arabic: Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief, 2011) and Sifr al-Ikhtifaa (The Book of Disappearance, 2014), both by Dar al-Jamal (Beirut, Lebanon). The Book of Disappearance, translated by Sinan Antoon, is forthcoming from Syracuse University Press in June 2019.

Some of her writings have been translated and published in French, German, English and Hebrew appeared in several anthologies and journals. She is working on her third novel and pursuing an MA in Social Work from NYU’s Silver school.

Rana Baker

‫ران بكر‬

Rana Baker is a Palestinian PhD student at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the study of infrastructure and environmental resources as micro-sites of political struggle in colonial and anti-colonial contexts.

LITERATURE HAS BEEN FUNDAMENTAL TO CHANGING THE DISCOURSE ON PALESTINE. AS HISTORIANS, WE ALWAYS LOOK FOR NARRATIVES IN ARCHIVES, WHERE POETS AND NOVELISTS GIVE LIFE AND SUBSTANCE TO THE HISTORIC RECORD”

Mirna Bamieh

‫مريان ابمية‬

Artist and chef Mirna Bamieh founded the Palestine Hosting Society, which is a live art project that explores traditional food culture in Palestine especially those that are on the verge of disappearing. The project brings these dishes back to life over dinner tables, talks, walks, and various interventions as an extension of her art practice that often looks at the politics of disappearance, and memory production. Mirna creates artworks that unpack social concerns and limitations in contemporary political dilemmas, and reflect on the conditions that characterize Palestinian communities. To date, Palestine Hosting Society has created several projects, including Family Dinners, Our Nabulsi Table, Our Jerusalem Table, A Wondering in Flavors: The Old City of Jerusalem, The Wehat Feast, The Edible Wild Plants of Palestine Table, Fermentation Station, Trails of Taste-Telling, A Menu of Dis/appearance, and Food Walks. After an intensive research period for each project, the collective creates a menu that is shared over one long table for 40–60+ guests, with dishes carefully selected to create spaces of reflection upon socio-political realities, attitudes, and historical practices, and even the suppressed elements of history. Palestine Hosting Society Tables took life in Palestine and in different parts of the world like Amman, Abu Dhabi, Warsaw, New York.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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‫إبتسام بركات‬

Ibtisam Barakat

Award-winning, Palestinian-American bilingual author, poet, artist and educator. She grew up in Palestine and now lives in the US. She publishes in both English and Arabic and her writings have been translated widely.

Ibtisam’s companion memoirs in English, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (2007), and Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine (2016), received more than thirty awards and honors, including the International Reading Association’s Best Book Award, the Arab American Museum Best Book Award, and the Middle East Council’s Best Book Award. Her books in Arabic include The Jar that Became a Galaxy which was the title for the national reading campaign in Palestine 2019, and The Lilac Girl which won the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Creativity 2020. Ibtisam is the founder and memoir writing coach of Write Your Life!

Victoria Brittain

‫فيكتوراي بريتان‬

Victoria Brittain is a journalist and author who has lived and worked in Saigon, Algiers, Nairobi, London and Washington. She has reported from more than two dozen African countries, and made many visits to the Middle East, especially to Palestine and Lebanon, and to Cuba. She worked for the London paper The Guardian for more than 20 years; has written for french magazines including Afrique/Asie and Le Monde Diplomatique; for The Nation, Race and Class, and numerous websites.

She was an adviser on the UN reports on the Impact of Conflict on Children and its follow-up, The Impact on Conflict on Women, and was an associate in the Crisis States programme of the London School of Economics. She was a translator for President Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, and gave lectures in Namibian liberation movement camps in Southern Angola. She has written, co-written and edited books on Southern Africa, and books and plays on Guantanamo Bay and the impact of the war on terror, including Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror. Her most recent book is Love and Resistance in the films of Mai Masri, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Ahlam Bsharat

‫أحالم بشارات‬

Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s author, as well as a teacher of creative writing. She is a prominent and highly regarded author of YA novels in the Arab world, and her books have met with great success at the local and international levels. They have been included in IBBY lists, shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award (UK) and Etisalat Award for Children’s Literature (UAE). She has presented twice and run creative writing workshops at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai, and participated in numerous creative writing forums in Europe.

Two of her novels, Code Name: Butterfly and Trees for the Absentees, have been translated into English and her most celebrated recent Arabic YA novels are: Maryam Sayida al-Astrolab , Ginger and Masna’ adh-dhikariyat. Her latest publication, Ism aT-Taa’ir, is a collection of poetry rooted in her peasant origins. She tells of village life with a rawness and directness in these poems, and without the usual romanticization of this subject matter. Her next book to be published, Ta’m fami, tells of her evocative memories of food whilst growing up in the Palestinian valleys. She is currently working on a book that chronicles her personal experience living in the region.

Diana Buttu

‫دايان بطو‬

Diana Buttu is a human rights lawyer and commentator based in Palestine. She has written numerous articles and contributed to several books, writing on Palestine and the law.

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Ebony Coletu

‫إبوين كوليتو‬

Ebony Coletu is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies, English, and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her forthcoming book, Forms of Submission: Writing for Aid and Opportunity in America, develops a theory of life writing submitted in forms for educational funding and employment, from slavery to the present. Her second book project, Pan-African Logistics, explores a back-to-Africa movement led by an indigenous African from the Gold Coast, targeting African Americans early in the 20th century. The book explores the technical issues involved in establishing the right of return and indigenous solidarity amid colonialism. She has contributed to various Palestinian solidarity campaigns in the US and in Egypt where she taught for five years.

Marguerite Dabaie

‫مارجريت داابي‬

Marguerite Dabaie, author of the graphic novel The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories (Rosarium 2018) draws autobio, socio-political, and historical-fictional comics with a decorative flair. She has also contributed to a number of anthologies and is currently working on a graphic novel about the 7th-century Silk Road. Marguerite’s illustrations have been published by The Nib, Abrams, and Penguin, among others. She also regularly contributes to the Electronic Intifada, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and Al-Shabaka.

Susan Muaddi Darraj

‫سوزان معادي دراج‬

Susan Muaddi Darraj won the American Book Award for her novel-in-stories, A Curious Land.

It also won an Arab American Book Award and the Grace Paley Prize, and it was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press. In January 2020, Capstone Books will launch her debut children’s chapter book series, Farah Rocks, about a smart, brave Palestinian American girl named Farah Hajjar. In 2018, she was named a 2018 Ford Fellow by USA Artists. Susan also is a two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and teaches in the graduate writing programs at Johns Hopkins University and Fairfield University. In 2019, she launched the viral #TweetYourThobe social media campaign to promote Palestinian culture.

FOR TOO LONG, THE PALESTINIAN STORY HAS BEEN SCRIPTED BY OTHER NATIONS... WE’RE RECLAIMING IT WITH THIS FESTIVAL. WE’RE ELEVATING AND CELEBRATING OUR OWN STORIES.”

EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD CAN BE ROBBED AND STOLEN EXCEPT ONE THING: THIS ONE THING IS THE LOVE THAT EMANATES FROM A HUMAN BEING TOWARD A SOLID COMMITMENT TO A CONVICTION OR CAUSE.” Ghassan Kanafani

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Angela Davis

‫انجيال دافيس‬

Angela Davis is an iconic American revolutionary and scholar. She emerged as a leading activist in the 1960s in the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. During the past fifty years, she has continued to be at the cutting edge of radical thought, prison abolition and movement organizing. She is the author of at least 14 books, including Are Prisons Obsolete?, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement and The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues.

Rabea Eghbariah

YOU HAVE TO ACT AS IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO RADICALLY CHANGE THE WORLD. AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL THE TIME.”

‫ربيع إغبارية‬

Rabea Eghbariah is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School and a civil rights attorney at Adalah. He wrote several articles on the intersection of law, land, food, and nature in Palestine and led the legal case against the criminalization of za’atar and akkoub. Rabea’s latest project Chasing Goats, Abducting Camels: Land, Landscape, Livestock, and the Law in Israel/Palestine explores the legal history of livestock in Israel/Palestine and received the Irving Oberman Prize in Legal History.

Ayah El-Fahmawi

‫آية الفحماوي‬

Ayah El-Fahmawi is a Palestinian American poet and performance artist originally from Tulkarem and Kofr Al-Labad. She was the 2018 second place recipient of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship and her work appears in the anthology titled We Feel a Country In Our Bones. Her work explores diasporic identity and the importance of storytelling in resistance.

Laila El-Haddad

AS A THIRD GENERATION PALESTINIAN, I’VE HEARD OUR STORIES CONSTANTLY WRITTEN AND REWRITTEN IN THE MAINSTREAM BY OTHERS, PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW HOW INTIMATELY WE CARRY THE PAIN AND LOVE FOR OUR HOMELAND. PALESTINE WRITES IS SO MEANINGFUL TO ME BECAUSE IT IS A CELEBRATION OF OUR STORIES, RECLAIMED AND TOLD BY US.”

‫ليىل الحداد‬

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian American journalist, award winning author and public speaker. She frequently speaks and writes about the intersection and the negotiation of identity, food and politics.

Through her work as a writer, storyteller, culinary ethnographer and documentarian she provides much-needed insight into the human experience of the region. In 2014, she was featured in the CNN program Parts Unknown with the late Anthony Bourdain as his guide in the Gaza Strip. El-Haddad received her B.A in Political Science and Comparative Areas Studies from Duke University in 2000, and her Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2002. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents from Gaza, she currently lives in Clarksville, Maryland with her husband, Yassine Daoud, and their four children.

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Nick Estes

‫نيك ايستس‬

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization. For 2017-2018, Estes was the American Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. His research engages colonialism and global Indigenous histories, with a focus on decolonization, oral history, U.S. imperialism, environmental justice, anti-capitalism, and the Oceti Sakowin. Estes is a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a network of Indigenous writers committed to defend and advance Oceti Sakowin (Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota) sovereignty, cultures, and histories. In 2015, his reporting on bordertown violence and racism for Indian Country Today won a Third Place Prize for Excellence in Beat Reporting from the Native American Journalism Association. Estes’ journalism and writing is also featured in the Intercept, Jacobin, Indian Country Today, The Funambulist Magazine, and High Country News.

Richard Falk

‫ريتشارد فالك‬

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law at Queen Mary University London, and Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He directs the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. Among his recent books are Humanitarian Intervention and Legitimacy Wars (2014), Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope (2015), Chaos & Counterrevolution: After the Arab Spring (2015), Power Shift: On the New Global Order (2016); Waiting for Rainbows (poetry) (2016); Palestine’s Horizon: Towards a Just Peace (2017). Since 2009 Falk has been annually nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

Maysam Ghani

‫ميمس غين‬

Maysam is a Muslim spoken-word poet with Palestinian and Syrian roots, dwelling on the unceded lands of Turtle Island. She graduated with a degree in Global Development Studies and is in her Bachelor of Education year, with specializations in First Nations, Metis and Inuit studies, and History at Queen’s University. Maysam is dedicated to anti-colonial social justice movements and often explores these politics in her writing. She writes poetry that explores questions of home, faith, displacement and healing through her familial and ancestral connections. You can find a selection of her published pieces in the forthcoming academic journal New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis (2020), in addition to the Queen’s Journal of Indigenous Studies (2019), Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship Anthology (2019) and Collective Reflections (2018). She was a featured poet at the Canadian Spoken Word Festival in 2019, and she has performed her poetry in two productions of Down There. Catch her reciting poems at your local Palestine solidarity action! Connect with her on Instagram: @maysamghani

Wafa Ghnaim

‫وفاء غنمي‬

Wafa Ghnaim is an American-born Palestinian businesswoman, writer, and artist. She created her artistic initiative, Tatreez & Tea, in 2015, to teach traditional Palestinian embroidery skills and preserve the meanings and stories behind each motif. Her selfpublished book, titled Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora (2018), documents the traditional patterns passed to her by her mother, award-winning Palestinian embroidery artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim. Tatreez & Tea has since become a global initiative that preserves and promotes the practice of Palestinian embroidery by anyone, anywhere, anytime. In 2018, Wafa was awarded the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Traditional Arts — a once in a lifetime award for her work in preserving and teaching Palestinian embroidery around the globe. From teaching at universities around the world to becoming the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum — Wafa Ghnaim has led a tatreez revolution; a global collective of Palestinians, allies, and artists who are committed to preserving Palestinian tatreez traditions in the diaspora. Tatreez & Tea now offers all classes and lectures 100% online. Wafa currently resides in Washington, DC.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Huzama Habayeb

‫حزامة حبايب‬

Huzama Habayeb is a Palestinian novelist, columnist, translator, poet and winner of multiple awards, including the Mahmoud Seif Eddin Al-Erani Award for Short Stories, the Jerusalem Festival of Youth Innovation Award in Short Stories, and the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. Her novels include The Origin of Love, Before the Queen Falls Asleep, and Velvet, and her short story collections include Sweeter Night, The Man Who Recurs, and A Form of Absence.

Saleem Haddad

‫سلمي حداد‬

Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a PalestinianLebanese father. His first novel, Guapa, published in 2016, was awarded a Stonewall Honour and won the 2017 Polari First Book Prize. He is also the author of several essays and short stories, including a science fiction story set in Gaza in 2048 for the Palestinian sci-fi anthology Palestine +100.

Samia Halaby

‫ساميا حليب‬

Samia Halaby was born in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1936. She is a visual artist, scholar and activist. Rounding out her sixth decade as a painter, she continues to explore abstraction and its relationship to reality. She has exhibited in galleries, museums and art fairs throughout the US, Europe, Asia and South America. Her work is housed in private and public collections around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York and Abu Dhabi) and the Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris). Halaby has authored and contributed to a number of books, notably: Liberation Art of Palestine (2001), Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre (2016), and Growing Shapes: Aesthetic Insights of an Abstract Painter (2018). She is the subject of two monographs and numerous reviews.

Isabella Hammad

‫إيزابال حماد‬

Isabella Hammad lives between London and New York. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Her first novel The Parisian won a 2019 Palestine Book Award and will be translated into fifteen languages. She was awarded the 2020 Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Betty Trask Award, and she was a 2019 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.

Nathalie Handal

‫اناتيل حنضل‬

Nathalie Handal is from Bethlehem, Palestine, was raised in Latin America, France and the Middle East, and educated in Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Claire Messud writes: “A contemporary Orpheus, she hymns our most urgent and ineffable truths.” Her most recent book include Life in a Country Album (2019), the flash collection The Republics, winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing, and the Arab American Book Award; the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía; and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award. Handal is the recipient of awards from The Lannan Foundation, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, Fondazione di Venezia, among others. She is a professor at Columbia University, and writes the column “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders.

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Zaha Hassan

‫زها حسن‬

Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focus is on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. Previously, she was the coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012.

She regularly participates in track II peace efforts and is a contributor to The Hill and Haaretz. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera English, CNN, and others.

Voulette Hattar

‫فوليت حطار‬

My name is Voulette and I am a student at UC Berkeley studying Ethnic Studies and Arabic. I was born in Amman and raised between Michigan and Southern California. I am an organizer with Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine and a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement. Poetry and writing has always been a part of my political organizing. I was a finalist for PYM’s Ghassan Kanafani Writing Scholarship in 2017. I was also a student and teacher in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program and an emerging poet mentor with Youth Speaks in the Bay Area. I am dedicated to writing because of and for the Palestinian women that have come before me, trying to honor their strength through my words, as a means to speak with them, as a means to fight with them, as a means to crawl out from the silences we have been forced to swallow for generations

Massoud Hayoun

‫مسعود حيون‬

Massoud Hayoun is an award-winning journalist and author based in Los Angeles. He has reported across the United States, North Africa and the Middle East, and China for outlets including Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera America and, subsequently, Al Jazeera English), Anthony Bourdain’s CNN program Parts Unknown, and Agence France-Presse, among others. Together with his grandmother Daida, Hayoun wrote a decolonial memoir of his Jewish Arab grandparents and what came before entitled When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History, which came out in 2019 from The New Press.

Alex Hernandez

‫أليكس هرياننديز‬

Alex Hernandez was born in El Salvador and with the love and support of family, made the arduous crossing to the US in 2012. After a short time in a US detention center, Alex made his way to a family member in New York City where he worked his way up from dishwasher to line cook. Under the mentorship of Chef Erik Osol, Alex learned and fell in love with cuisine and kitchen life. Chef Osol recommended Alex to Ilili Restaurant where he worked his way up to Sous Chef and learned to master Middle Eastern cuisine. When the pandemic hit New York City in 2020, Alex started volunteering at Migrant Kitchen. He doesn’t want anybody to suffer hunger and has been inspired by Nasser Jabber and Chef Daniel Dorado to keep this job as an opportunity to give to every New Yorker in need.

Marc Lamont Hill

‫مارك المونت هيل‬

Marc Lamont Hill is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill’s scholarly research interests include digital activism, mass incarceration, and urban education. He is the author several books, including Nobody; Gentrifier; and Beats, Rhymes and Classroom Life. Marc Lamont Hill is also the host of BET News and a CNN political commentator. An award-winning journalist, Dr. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Since his days as a youth in Philadelphia, Hill has been a social justice activist and organizer. He is a founding board member of My5th, a non-profit organization devoted to educating youth about their legal rights and responsibilities. He is also a board member and organizer of the Philadelphia Student Union. Hill also works closely with the ACLU Drug Reform Project, focusing on drug informant policy. Over the past years, he has actively worked on campaigns to end the death penalty release numerous political prisoners. Most recently, Hill founded The People’s Education Center, a Philadelphia (Germantown) based non-profit organization for community based education.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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‫رايتشيل هوملس‬

Rachel Holmes

A PalFest veteran, Rachel Holmes is the author most recently of Eleanor Marx: A Life. Her new book Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel is published the US in September 2020. Her new book Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel is published in December 2020, coinciding with the 19th Amendment centennial of women’s right to vote. Holmes is the co-editor of Fifty Shades of Feminism and I Call Myself a Feminist. She curated many programmes with Palestinian writers and artists while Director of Literature at London’s Southbank Centre. From 2009 to 2014 she was tutor and writer in residence at the Palestine Writing Workshop in the West Bank, a PalFest initiative. She is a contributor to This is Not A Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature and the British Refugee Tales project, calling for the end of indefinite immigration detention in the UK. ART IS THE RECORDING ANGEL OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE, AND THE AVENGING ANGEL OF THOSE WHO ABUSE THEM. WRITING CAN SHOW THE PRESENT WHAT THE PAST HAS SUFFERED AND IMAGINE FUTURES THAT, ONCE READ, CAN NEVER BE FORGOTTEN. I AM PROUD TO CONTRIBUTE TO PALESTINE WRITES. AS A SOUTHAFRICAN-BRITISH WRITER WHO GREW UP UNDER EXTREME STATE CENSORSHIP AND DENIED THE RIGHT OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH I KNOW WELL THE POWER OF LITERATURE IN KEEPING ALIVE THE FLAME OF FREEDOM AND IN MOVING HEARTS AND MINDS IN AID OF STRUGGLES THAT SEEM SO IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL THEY ARE WON.”

Amin Husain

‫أمني حسني‬

Amin Husain has a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, a J.D. from Indiana University School of Law, and an LL.M. from Columbia Law School. Amin practiced law for five years before transitioning to art, studying at the School of the International Center of Photography and Whitney Independent Study Program. Together, Amin and Nitasha are MTL Collective, a collaboration that joins research, aesthetics, organizing, and action in its art practice. MTL is a founder of Tidal: Occupy Theory, Direct Action Front for Palestine, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, and most recently MTL+, the collective facilitating Decolonize This Place. Currently, MTL is in post-production of an experimental feature film, Unsettling (forthcoming end of 2020)

Nitasha Dhillon

‫نيتاشا ديلون‬

Nitasha Dhillon has a B.A. in Mathematics from St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Media Study — University of Buffalo. Nitasha also attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York and School of International Center of Photography.

Nasser Jaber

‫انرص جابر‬

Originally from Ramallah, Nasser Jaber came to the United States as a university student in economics and finance.

Working in restaurants to pay for his degree, Nasser soon found that his true passion was food, and that his talents would take him from waiting tables to training under the best chefs in New York City. Nasser broke into the New York food scene when he opened Mazeish, a Palestinian-South American fusion restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit and diverse stories of America’s immigrant communities, he decided to use the restaurant as a space for chefs to try new concepts, celebrate their heritage, or host dinners to address social issues. It was this concept that gave rise to Nasser’s acclaimed project Komeeda, an online platform that helps people connect, taste exciting new foods, and meet the passionate chefs behind their meals. Komeeda is also dedicated to social impact through culinary diplomacy, sharing the values of entrepreneurship, private enterprise and food security to the world. Komeeda has been working with the U.S. government in Turkey and Sweden to provide real solutions to the refugee crisis through food hospitality and farming. Nasser is also the cofounder of the Migrant Kitchen with renowned chef Daniel Dorado. The Migrant Kitchen is all service catering company that highlights migrant food through catering and food entrepreneurship.

Khalida Jarrar

‫خالدة جرار‬

Khalida Jarrar is an elected member of Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). She is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian representative on the Council of Europe. She played a major role in Palestine’s application to join the International Criminal Court. She is one of the most well known Palestinian political prisoners, who was detained for 18 months without charge or trial, then rearrested and detained five months after her initial release. She was originally scheduled to speak via satellite, but Israel rearrested her, again without charge or trail, and she has been imprisoned since, over a year now. However, the festival will hear a letter from her, delivered by her daughters, Suha and Yafa Jarrar.

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‫هسا جرار‬

Suha Jarrar

Suha Jarrar is a Senior Research and Advocacy Officer with Al-Haq human rights organization - Legal research and advocacy department. Her research and advocacy are in the areas of gender, environment and climate justice within the context of occupation, as well as other widespread human rights violations committed against Palestinians. She holds a Masters of Science degree in Climate Change Science and Policy from the University of Sussex in the UK, and a double Bachelor of Arts degree in Gender and Environmental Studies from Trent University in Canada.

Yafa Jarrar

‫ايفا جرار‬

Yafa Jarrar is a Palestinian human rights lawyer living in Ottawa. Yafa was born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, Palestine. She moved to Canada in 2003 to attend Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific. Yafa has been involved with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Palestine and internationally since the BDS call in 2005.

Over the years, she has witnessed the violent arrests of her parents, both of whom were political prisoners in Israeli prisons for many years. Yafa’s mother, Khalida Jarrar, is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and is currently a political prisoner in Damon Israeli prison.

Fady Joudah

‫فادي جودة‬

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He has published four collections of poems. These are The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; and, most recently, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. 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.

Andrew Kadi

‫أندرو قايض‬

Andrew Kadi is an organizer active for the past 19 years in support of Palestinian rights and working on civil society initiatives among Palestinians. He is a member of Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network, spent 9 years with Adalah-NY and 9 years with the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Kadi has written for or appeared in The Guardian, USA Today, The Forward, TRT, CityLab, the BBC, Electronic Intifada, and Mondoweiss.

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT IN ANCIENT TIMES THE WORST PUNISHMENT OF ALL WA S NOT DE ATH , BUT BANISHMENT? ” Jean Said Makdisi

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Ghada Karmi

‫غادة كرمي‬

Dr. Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian academic, activist and writer. She was born in Jerusalem, but grew up and was educated in England, where she first trained as a doctor of medicine. She went on to become an academic at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Her major area of research has centred on the Palestine/Israel conflict, which she taught until 2012. She has also worked on issues of migration and adjustment of minorities to Western culture, and carried out three major studies of the Punjabi, Moroccan and Egyptian communities in London.

Remi Kanazi

‫رميي كنازي‬

Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and organizer based in New York City. He is the author of the new released collection of poetry Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine.

He is also the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine (RoR Publishing, 2011) and the editor of Poets For Palestine (Al Jisser Group, 2008). His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world including the New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera English, and BBC Radio. He has appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and is on the advisory committee for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He has taught poetry workshops from Oklahoma to the West Bank, given talks from New York City to London, and has performed at hundreds of venues, from New Orleans to Amman.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

‫ كهوالين كوانوي‬.‫ج‬

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008) and Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018). She is also the editor of Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018), which is based on the radio program she produced and hosted for seven years that was widely syndicated through the Pacific network. She is currently completing a new book, “Indigenous Implications: Decolonizing Palestine Solidarity Activism.” Kauanui is one of the six co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). Since its inception, she has served as an advisory board member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Robin D. G. Kelley

‫ كييل‬.‫ ج‬.‫روبن د‬

Author and historian Robin D.G. Kelley is one of the most distinguished experts on African American studies and a celebrated professor who has lectured at some of America’s highest learning institutions. He is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press) and Africa Speaks, America Answers (Harvard University Press). His career spans several esteemed universities, including serving as a Professor of History and Africana at New York University as well as acting as Chairman of NYU’s History Department. While at NYU, Kelley was one of the youngest full professors in the country at 32 years of age. He was also the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia and helped to shape programs at its Institute for Research in African American Studies. Kelley’s work includes seven books as well as over 100 magazine articles, which have been featured in such publications as The Nation, Monthly Review, The Voice Literary Supplement, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, and African Studies Review. He received his PhD in US History and MA in African History from UCLA.

Nancy Kricorian

‫اننيس كريكوراين‬

Nancy Kricorian is a writer and organizer who lives in New York.

She is the author of three novels focused on post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora experience — Zabelle (1998), Dreams of Bread and Fire (2003), and All the Light There Was (2013). She is currently at work on her fourth novel, which is about an Armenian family in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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Mohammed El-Kurd

‫محمد الكرد‬

Mohammed el-Kurd is a nationally-touring poet and writer from Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in The Guardian, This Week In Palestine, Al-Jazeera English, The Nation, and the forthcoming Vaccuuming Away Fire anthology, among others. His debut book Rifqa will be published in 2021 by Haymarket Books. Mohammed graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. in Writing, where he created Radical Blankets, an award-winning multimedia poetry magazine. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in poetry from Brooklyn College. His poetry-oud album, Bellydancing On Wounds, was released in collaboration with Palestinian musical artist Clarissa Bitar. Mohammed has spent his undergraduate weekends performing poetry at cultural centers across the United States and hopes to continue in the post-COVID-19 era.

Daoud Kuttab

‫داود كطاب‬

Daoud Kuttab, born in Jerusalem in 1955, is a Palestinian journalist and media activist. He is the former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Kuttab is currently the director general of Community Media Network (CMN) a non-profit media organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arabic-speaking region. He began his journalism career working in the Palestinian print media (Al-Fajr, Al-Quds and Asennara) He established and presided over the Jerusalem Film Institute in the 90s. He established and has headed between 1996 until 2007 the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University.

In 1998, he partially moved to Amman (because of family tragedy and remarriage) and in 2000 established the Arab world’s first internet radio station AmmanNet (www.ammannet. net). Mr. Kuttab is a regular columnist for the Jordan Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Daily Star in Lebanon. He has co-produced a number of award winning documentaries and children’s television programs. His op-ed columns have appeared in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph and Shimbum Daily in Tokyo. He has received a number of international awards among them the CPJ Freedom of Expression Award, the IPI World Press Freedom Hero, PEN Club USA Writing Freedom Award, the Leipzeg Courage in Freedom Award and the Next Foundation (UK) Peace through Media Award.

Tariq Luthun

‫طارق لظن‬

Tariq Luthun is a Detroit-born Palestinian community organizer, data analyst, and Emmy Award-winning poet from Detroit, MI. He earned his MFA in Poetry from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Luthun currently serves as Editor of the Micro Department at The Offing, and his work has appeared in Vinyl Poetry, Lit Hub, Mizna, Winter Tangerine Review, and Button Poetry, among other credits. His first collection of poetry, How The Water Holds Me, was awarded Editors’ Choice by Bull City Press and is set to release in April 2020.

Lisa Majaj

‫ليسا هسري مجاج‬

Lisa Suhair Majaj is the author of the children’s book Naila Shares a Story (Benchmark Education), about a Palestinian child from Jordan who moves to the US with her family. She is also author of the prizewinning poetry volume Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press) and of poetry and prose in journals and anthologies across the US, the Middle East, Europe, and India. She has coedited three collections of critical essays on Arab, Arab-American, and international women’s writing. Her writing has been used in various non-literary venues, including the 2016 photography exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America & the Middle East at the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, and has been translated into several languages, including Arabic and Greek. She lives in Cyprus.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Ahmad Mansour

‫أحمد منصور‬

Ahmed Mansour, born and raised in Gaza Strip, is an NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, News and Documentary Program graduate. His debut film Brooklyn Inshallah, a feature documentary on the first Palestinian to ever run for the NY City Council, was released in 2019 and premeired at prestigous film festivals such as DOC NYC and TPFF. POV Magazine wrote, “Ahmed Mansour has made a verité film about democracy in action. He was named the 2019 MountainFilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellow based in Telluride, Colorado. Ahmed is the founder and head of productions at Philistia Films. He has spoken to audiences at Duke University, Columbia University and the Washington Center for Narrative Studies about his journey with filmmaking as a result of 2014 Israel’s attack against Gaza.

Shadia Mansour

‫شاداي منصور‬

Shadia Mansour is a British Palestinian singer and hip hop artist, often referred to as “the first lady of Arabic hip hop”.

She sings and raps on Palestine and transnational solidarity with the global South in Arabic and English. She has collaborated with artists like Anira Tijoux, DAM, Lowkey, M-1 of Dead Prez, Narcy and Omar Offendum.

Nur Masalha

‫نور مصالحة‬

Professor Nur Masalha is a Palestinian writer, historian and academic. He is currently a member of the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London. He is editor of the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies. His books include: Expulsion of the Palestinians (1992); A Land Without a People (1997); The Politics of Denial (2003); The Bible and Zionism (2007); The Palestine Nakba (2012); An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (2018) and Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018)

Mai Masri

‫مي مرصي‬

Mai Masri is a Palestinian filmmaker who studied at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley. Her films have been screened worldwide winning over 90 international awards including the Trailblazer award at Mipdoc in Cannes, France. Her debut feature film, 3000 Nights (2015) had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival and was screened internationally where it won over 28 awards. Known for her films that focus on women and children and for her human and poetic approach, Mai’s filmography includes: Children of Fire (1990), A Woman for Her Time (1995), Children of Shatila (1998), Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001), Beirut Diaries (2006), 33 Days (2007), 3000 Nights (2015).

She also co-directed with her late husband Jean Chamoun: Under the Rubble (1983), Wild Flowers (1986), War Generation – Beirut (1988), Suspended Dreams (1992), and produced In the Shadows of the City (2000), Hostage of Time (1994), Women Beyond Borders (2004), and Lanterns of Memory (2009).

Adam Miyashiro

‫آدم مياشريو‬

Adam Miyashiro is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Stockton University in New Jersey. He completed a PhD in Comparative Literature at Penn State. He is an Executive Council member of the Delaware Valley Medieval Association, and is also on the Advisory Board of the journal Early Middle English. He is currently the Executive Vice President of Stockton Federation of Teachers, an American Federation of Teachers local union. He is a founding member of the Medievalists of Color, has served on USACBI’s Organizing Collective since 2017, and has published articles and reviews in Literature Compass, postmedieval, Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Law and Religion, Notes and Queries, and Neophilologus.

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Michel Moushabeck

‫مشبك‬ ‫ميشيل‬

Michel S. Moushabeck is a writer, editor, publisher, and musician. He is the founder of Interlink Publishing, a 33-year-old, Massachusetts-based independent publishing house specializing in fiction-in-translation, history and current affairs, cultural guides, illustrated children’s books, and award-winning international cookbooks. He is the author of several books including, Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa. Most recently, he co-edited the winter issue of the Massachusetts Review focusing on Mediterranean literature and contributed a piece to Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora (Edinburgh University Press). He is the recipient of NYU’s Founder’s Day Award for outstanding scholarship (1981), the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Alex Odeh Award (2010) and The Palestinian Heritage Foundation Achievement Award (2011). He serves on the board of directors of Media Education Foundation and on the board of trustees of The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), an annual literary prize administered by the UK’s Booker Prize Foundation. He is also a founding member and director of the Boston-based Layaali Arabic Music Ensemble. He has performed at concert halls worldwide and plays percussion on the music soundtrack of an award-winning BBC documentary on Islam, which aired as part of the series The People’s Century. His recording credits include two albums: Lost Songs of Palestine and Folk Songs and Dance Music from Turkey and the Arab World. He teaches percussion at Amherst College and lectures frequently on Arabic music and literature-in-translation. He lives in Leverett, Massachusetts.

Bill Mullen

‫بيل مولني‬

Bill V. Mullen is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue University. He is co-editor (with Ashley Dawson) of Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israel Universities (Haymarket Books, 2015). He is also the author of James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019) and co-editor, with Chris Vials, of The U.S. Antifascist Reader (Verso, 2020). He is a member of the organizing collective for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). At Purdue, he is faculty adviser for Purdue Students for Justice in Palestine.

Mahmoud Muna

‫محمود مىن‬

Mahmoud Muna was born in Jerusalem and attended school in its refugee camp (Shu’fat) where his dad taught three consecutive generations. Before finishing his studies at Al-Quds University, he was forced to re-located to the UK where he finished his first and second degree in London. He is a computer science graduate, trained communicator, and currently known to many as the bookseller of Jerusalem. He runs his family’s two bookshops, The famous Educational Bookshop, and the prestigious Bookshop at the American Colony Hotel. He is active in many cultural initiatives including the Kalimat Literature Festival. He is also a regular contributor to the media on culture and politics. His interests lie somewhere between culture and identity, behaviors and language, and when Mahmoud is not reading, he is writing for local and international cultural magazines and newspapers.

Sahar Mustafah

‫سحر مصطىف‬

Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel The Beauty of Your Face (W.W. Norton, 2020) was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Los Angeles Times United We Read selection, and one of Marie Claire Magazine’s 2020 Best Fiction by Women. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction 2020 First Novel Prize, and is currently a finalist for Chicago Writers Association Best Book of the Year award and the Chicago Review of Books award. It was recently selected for the Great Group Reads for National Reading Group Month. Her short story collection Code of the West was the winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Award. Her stories have earned a Distinguished Story citation from Best American Short Stories 2016, First Place in Fiction from the Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah earned her MFA from Columbia College Chicago where she was the recipient of the David Friedman Award for Best Fiction. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Taghreed Najjar

‫تغريد نجار‬

Taghreed Najjar has been writing for children for over 40 years now. Her output includes picture books for ages 3-7 that have become classics, books for early readers ages 7-8, and inspiring novels for teens and young adults that address difficult subjects reflecting the realities of political and cultural conflicts in Palestine. A number of Taghreed Najjar’s books have been translated into several languages, including English, French, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Turkish and Greek. Several of her books have won awards such as the Itisalat Book Award 2017 for her book What happened to my Brother Ramez? and the Kitabi Arab thought Award 2013 for her picture book Grandma Nafeesa. Most recently Taghreed Najjar’s novella Whose Doll Is This? won the 2019 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature in the Young Adult category. Taghreed has also been nominated for the prestigious Alma award for 2019.

Arwa Nasir

‫أروى انرص‬

Dr. Arwa Kayed Abdulhaq Nasir is an academic pediatrician in Omaha, Nebraska. She is a researcher of child development and family influence on children’s health, and has published many scientific papers on childhood behavioral health and early literacy. She is also the coeditor of a textbook on the psychosocial aspects of health in Arab populations.

Dr. Nasir believes in the critical role of reading to children in promoting literacy and in enhancing emotional, cognitive, and language skills. She is motivated to write Arabic children’s books by her love and appreciation of the beauty of the Arabic language and her desire to be instrumental in bringing this language to children at a young age. She has written and published eight children’s books.

Ibrahim Nasrallah

‫إبراهمي نرصهللا‬

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in the Alwehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan and began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked as a journalist and for the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation.

He has been a full-time writer since 2006, publishing 14 poetry collections and 16 novels, including his epic series of 8 novels covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history. Four of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including his novel Time of White Horses, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009 and for the 2014 London-based Middle East Monitor Prize for the Best Novel about Palestine.

Lanterns of the King of Galilee was also longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013. Three of his novels have been translated into Italian, one into Danish and one into Turkish. He is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight literary prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever was listed by The Guardian newspaper in the top 10 most important novels written about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His 2015 novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro won the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel. He was awarded the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog.

Maha Nassar

ّ ‫مها‬ ‫نصار‬

Dr. Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017) received a 2018 Palestine Book Award. In it, she examines how Palestinian intellectuals in Israel connected to global decolonization movements through literary and journalistic writings. Her research also examines how Palestinians have engaged with the Black freedom movement in the United States. Dr. Nassar’s analysis and opinion pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Conversation, The Hill and elsewhere. She is currently working on her next book, titled: The Palestinians: A Global History.

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Kalamaoka’aina Niheu

ُ ‫كالماأوكائينا نهيو‬

Dr. Kalamaoka’aina Niheu is a Kanaka Maoli physician born on the frontlines of the Hawaiian movement. As a kauka (doctor) for Onipa’a Na Hui Kalo, she has helped support and revitalize traditional kalo farming and ai pono or food Sovereignty for 20 years. She helped coordinate the No Aloha Poke movement and is the co-founder of the Standing Rock Medic Healer’s Council as well as the Mauna Medic Healer’s Hui. Her published articles include Standing Rock Violence and Police Militarization, Indigenous Resistance in an Era of Climate Change Crisis, and Pu’uhonua: Sanctuary and Struggle at Makua.

Naomi Shihab Nye

‫انيومي هشاب اني‬

Palestinian-American writer, editor and educator Naomi Shihab Nye is Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States (Poetry Foundation). She grew up in Ferguson, Missouri, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she continues to live. Her late father Aziz Shihab was a journalist and author of Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine. She has been a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world for more than 40 years, and has written or edited 35 books including collections of poetry, novels for teens, picture books, essays, short stories, and anthologies of poetry. Her books Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, This Same Sky, and The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico have been in print more than 20 years. Her volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

The Turtle of Oman (Greenwillow) a novel for children set in Muscat, won the Arab American Book Award. Her most recent books are Voices in the Air, The Tiny Journalist, Cast Away, and Everything Comes Next.

Iasmin Omar Ata

‫ايمسني عرم عطا‬

Iasmin Omar Ata is a Middle Eastern and Muslim award-winning comics artist, game designer, and illustrator who creates art about coping with illness, understanding identity, dismantling oppressive structures, and Arab-Islamic futurism. Their recent graphic novel, Mis(h)adra, has resonated with readers and reviewers alike with its vivid and searingly honest account of epileptic lived experience. Iasmin has been reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The Electronic Intifada, Library Journal, and NPR; they’ve taught and spoken at the New York Public Library and Harvard University. They thrive on dedication, dreams, and hard work and believe wholeheartedly in the healing power of art.

Jamila Osman

‫جميلة عمصان‬

Jamila Osman is a Somali poet and essayist from Portland, Oregon. A public school teacher for many years, she is now an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa. She has received fellowships from Caldera, Djerassi, and the MacDowell Colony. She was the winner of the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and the Adirondack Review’s 46er Prize for Poetry. Some of her work can be found in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Teen Vogue, and numerous other publications and anthologies. Her first chapbook, A Girl is a Sovereign State, was published in fall 2020 by Akashic Books.

Ra Page

‫را بيج‬

Ra Page is the founder and CEO of Comma Press, a UK-based publishing house specializing in short fiction. He was the first editor to publish the multi-award-winning Iraqi author Hassan Blasim, and has overseen numerous anthologies from the Arab world (including city anthologies from Gaza, Khartoum and Cairo). In 2014 he worked closely with Palestinian Atef Abu Saif on his searing account of the war as it unfolded, The Drone Eats with Me, and in 2016 launched Comma’s ‘+100’ series, which strives to bring new science fiction to Englishspeaking audiences from the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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David Palumbo Liu

‫دافيد ابلومبو ليو‬

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford. He studies race and ethnicity, human rights, the environment, and ethics and politics. He is currently writing a book on political voice for Haymarket Books. His writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and other venues. He is on the Organizing Collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Shailja Patel

‫شالجا ابتيل‬

Kenyan activist Shailja Patel is the author of Migritude, #1 Amazon poetry bestseller, currently taught in over 100 colleges and universities worldwide. Her poems have been translated into 17 languages. Honors include a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, a Voices of Our Nations poetry award, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award, the Nordic Africa Institute African Writer Fellowship, and Jozi Book Fair Guest Writer Award. Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for an equitable democracy in Kenya. The African Women’s Development Fund named her one of Fifty Inspirational African Feminists. She is currently a Research Associate at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center, in Western Massachusetts.

Ryan Opalanietet Pierce

‫راين أوابالنيتيت بريس‬

Ryan Opalanietet Pierce is a member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and Founder and Artistic Director of The Eagle Project, a professional performing arts company that stages the works of Native American playwrights, does educational outreach on Native American culture, and produces the works of other American voices that are not frequently heard.

Jasbir K. Puar

FOLLOWING CENTURIES OF COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM AND FASCISM, THE TIME HAS FINALLY COME FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AROUND THE GLOBE TO FIGHT FOR THE FREEDOM, EQUAL RIGHTS, AND DEMOCRACY THAT IS INHERENTLY OURS. THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF TURTLE ISLAND STAND ARM IN ARM WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN PALESTINE TO SHOW THE WORLD THAT DESPITE THE SUPPOSED STRENGTH OF ENTRENCHED POWER, NOTHING CAN STAND IN THE WAY OF THE TRUTH AND THE SHEER TENACITY OF WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED BY OUR SOLIDARITY.”

‫ بوار‬.‫جاسبري ك‬

Jasbir K. Puar is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of the awardwinning books The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017); and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), which has been translated into Spanish and French and re-issued in an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (2017). In 2019 she was awarded the Kessler from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS), given yearly to scholars and activists whose work has significantly impacted queer research and organizing.

Ahmad Qabaha

‫أحمد قباحا‬

Ahmad Qabaha is an Assistant Professor in Postcolonial, Comparative and American Studies at An-Najah National University in Palestine and their director in the Minor in American Studies Program. He currently teaches a wide range of courses at An-Najah that are relevant to his field of specialization including contemporary American Novel, Modern American Literature, Introduction to American Studies, Orientalism and Oriental Studies, and Postcolonial Literature and Comparative Literature. He is highly interested in teaching and conducting research on literature and art and investigating the “link” between human studies and politics on the one hand, and the connection between culture and politics, on the other. He is also interested in examining the various modes and paradigms of literary, historical, socio-political and cultural displacements in the twenty-first century. His first monograph Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing has recently been published by Palgrave, and his co-edited collection Post-millennial Palestine: Memory, Narration and Resistance (LUP) should come out soon. He also published various articles in well-reputed journals, including Interventions. palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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Marcia Lynx Qualey

‫مارسيا لينكس كوييل‬

Marcia Lynx Qualey is founding editor of the translation-community website ArabLit (www.arablit.org), which won a 2017 London Book Fair prize. MLQ is also co-host of the popular BULAQ podcast, and works on the magazine ArabLit Quarterly. Her translation of Sonia Nimr’s Wondrous Journeys in Amazing Lands is forthcoming in December 2020, and she is happily at work translating Sonia’s Thunderbird trilogy.

Andrew Ross

‫اندرو روس‬

Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Director of the American Studies Program at NYU. A contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times, The Nation, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal, Bird On Fire, Nice Work if You Can Get It, Fast Boat to China, No-Collar, and The Celebration Chronicles. His most recent book, (from Verso) is Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel.

Mohammad Sabaaneh

‫محمد سباعنة‬

Mohammad is a cartoonist. His work has been published in many Arabic newspapers, including Al-Etehad, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Al-Ghad Al-Ordoni, and Al-Akhbar Al-Lubnanieh. He currently works for the Palestinian newspaper, AlHaya Al-Jadeja. Sabaaneh is a member of the International Cartoon Movement and has won awards for his political caricatures. His work has been exhibited in Britain, Spain, Washington, Berlin, Norway, Holland, Genève, Qatar, and Syria. Sabaaneh continues to give lectures and workshops on the art of caricature around the world. In particular, Sabaaneh conducts workshops specialized for children to hone their natural critical thinking and imaginative skills. In 2016, Freedom House chose one of his works as one of the most important photos for the year. In 2017 Sabaaneh was invited as an emerging intellectual to represent Palestine at the United Nations. He has also organized two international fairs in Palestine, the first in 2014 with the participation of 99 artists in the Mahmoud Darwish Museum. The second was in 2018 (from the World to Jerusalem) with the participation of 155 artists, and was later duplicated in Belgium, Holland, and London.

Steven Salaita

‫ستيفن صاليطة‬

Steven Salaita is author of eight books, most recently Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.

I ASK NOTHING MORE THAN TO DIE IN MY COUNTRY TO DISSOLVE AND MERGE WITH THE GRASS, TO GIVE LIFE TO A FLOWER THAT A CHILD OF MY COUNTRY WILL PICK.” Fadwa Tuqan

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Faisal Saleh

‫فيصل صالح‬

Faisal was born in 1951 in El-Bireh to a Palestinian refugee family, with 10 children, displaced in the 1948 Nakbah from Salamah (Jaffa). Faisal grew up in the West Bank attendeding public schools through 11th grade when he came to the US for further education at George School, Oberlin College (BA) and the University of CT (MBA).

Faisal’s field is employee benefits. He worked at the Travelers and held other positions in the service and corporate employee benefits industry. In 1979 he published a magazine on employee benefits serving as editor and publisher for 13 years. In 1985, Faisal started a software company (BeneSoft) to develop benefits administration systems for corporations. In 1998 BeneSoft morphed into benefits administration outsourcer (Aliquant). In 2010 Aliquant (85 major clients and 200 employees) was acquired by the global firm Willis Towers Watson. Since then, Faisal has been a half owner of the Washington DC boutique firm Hager Strategic which advises corporations on benefits and HR outsourcing strategies and vendor selection and management.

Faisal is also in real estate, aviation, and in a medical hi-tech startup business. In April 2018 Faisal launched the Palestine Museum US, the first Palestinian museum in the Western Hemisphere. With 6,000 square feet of exhibit space, its mission is preserving Palestinian history and culture, celebrating Palestinian artistic excellence, and telling the Palestinian story through the arts. In his free time, Faisal pursues his passions for tennis and photography.

Tahani Saleh

‫هتاين صالح‬

Tahani Saleh is a Brooklyn-based performer, poet, educator, and activist. She has been seen on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and was a member of the 2007 Nuyorican National Slam Team. She is a graduate of Columbia University and a former Professor of Curriculum at CUNY. Her poetry has taken her across continents, from the Apollo Theater in New York City to universities in South Africa, Germany, and Palestine.

Vivien Sansour

‫فيفيان صنصور‬

Vivien Sansour is an artist and conservationist who uses image, sketch, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for the protection of biodiversity as a cultural and political act. As the founder of Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and the Traveling Kitchen project, she works with farmers to promote seed conservation and crop diversity. She is codirector with Riad Bahour of the feature film El Bizreh Um El Fay, which was awarded best project at RamallahDoc 2015 and will be released in 2020. She has presented her work as an artist at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery, Washington, DC; SALT Art Center, Istanbul; and the 2019 Venice Biennale. Born Jerusalem, she lives in Bethlehem, Palestine and Los Angeles, USA.

Malini Johar Schueller

‫ماليين جوهر شولري‬

Malini Johar Schueller is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida where she teaches courses on US empire studies, comparative settler colonialism, and Asian American studies.

She is the author of several books: The Politics of Voice: Liberalism and Social Criticism from Franklin to Kingston, (1992), U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790– 1890 (1998), Locating Race: Global Sites of Postcolonial Citizenship (2009) and Campaigns of Knowledge: U.S. Pedagogies of Colonialism and Occupation in the Philippines and Japan (2019).

She has also co-edited Exceptional State: Contemporary US Culture and the New Imperialism and Dangerous Professors. She is a member of the organizing collective for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). At the University of Florida she is faculty adviser for Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2019 she was selected to participate in a Faculty Development Seminar by PARC (Palestinian American Research Council).

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Raja Shehadeh

‫رجا شحادة‬

Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer and writer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several books including the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks, as well as Strangers in the House; Occupation Diaries; Language of War, Language of Peace; A Rift in time; Where the Line is Drawn and his most recent book Going Home A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation. He lives in Ramallah Palestine.

Mahmoud Shukair

‫شقري‬ ‫محمود‬

Mahmoud Shukair is an award winning Palestinian writer born in Jabal al-Mukabbar, Jerusalem, in 1941. He writes short stories and novels for adults and teenagers. He is the author of fortyfive books, six television series, and four plays. His stories have been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Chinese, Mongolian and Czech. He has occupied leadership positions within the Jordanian Writers’ Union and the Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists. In 2011, he was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Prize for Freedom of Expression.

Farah Siraj

‫فرح رساج‬

Named Jordan’s Musical Ambassadress, Jordanian virtuoso Farah Siraj balances a career that spans the world, where she has performed at some of the most prestigious platforms, including the United Nations, Nobel Prize Hall, the World Economic Forum, The John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Lincoln Center in New York, MTV, Coke Studio, the TV show “Good Morning Live” in the USA and MBC TV in the Middle East. In addition, Farah represents Jordan annually on United Nations World Peace Day. Her 2011 album entitled Nomad was funded personally by His Majesty King Abdullah II. In Nomad, Farah performs her original compositions, fusing influences of Middle Eastern music, flamenco, jazz, bossa and pop, with lyrics in Arabic, Spanish and English, which featured more than 30 internationally acclaimed musicians from five different continents. In 2012 Farah presented the world premier of her new work, entitled The Arabian Jazz Project, featuring original compositions and traditional middle eastern tunes set to a jazz context, from which she was chosen as one of New York’s “Summer Stars of Jazz” and named “the Norah Jones of the Middle East” by New York Time Out. Her third album is entitled Dunya and she is currently working on her fourth.

Tom Suárez

‫توم سوارز‬

Author and musician Tom Suárez is best known for his 2016 book, State of Terror, “the first comprehensive and structured analysis of the violence and terror employed by the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel against the people of Palestine” (Ilan Pappé). His recent Writings on the Wall is an annotated collection of Palestinian oral histories, and he is the author as well of three highly-regarded books on the history of cartography. A Juilliard-trained violinist who has performed around the world, Suárez is a former faculty member of Palestine’s National Conservatory of Music.

I AM FROM THERE. I AM FROM HERE. I AM NOT THERE AND I AM NOT HERE. I HAVE TWO NAMES, WHICH MEET AND PART, AND I HAVE TWO LANGUAGES. I FORGET WHICH OF THEM I DREAM IN.” Mahmoud Darwish

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Neferti X. M. Tadiar

‫نيفريت اتداير‬

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of the books, Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization (2009) and Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order (2004), and coeditor (with Angela Y. Davis) of Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representation (2005). Her current book, Remaindered Life, a meditation on the disposability and surplus of life-making under contemporary conditions of global empire, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Tadiar is former co-Editor of the journal Social Text and Director of the Alfredo F. Tadiar Library in San Fernando, La Union, Philippines.

Laila Taji

‫ليىل اتجي‬

Laila Taji is the author of These Chicks an Arabic nursery rhyme/picture book. She published the book to help bridge the gap she saw in Arabic literature between ABC books and more complex Arabic stories. She created ArabishWay, a website that provides tools for parents and educators who want to teach or pass along the Arabic language. She has a BA from Smith College, a BSN from Johns Hopkins and an MPH from the University of Washington. Her family is Palestinian (from Salama, Ramleh and Jerusalem), and she has lived in the United States since she was three.

She learned some Arabic as a child and studied a little in college, but has always struggled with the language. She is proud that despite the challenge, both her girls know how to write, read and understand quite a bit of Arabic.

Koloud Tarapolsi

‫خلود ترابوليس‬

Koloud Tarapolsi moved to America with her family when she was 7 years old from Libya and got to know her adopted land by traveling to all 50 states, including Puerto Rico. Koloud received her Bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University, her Master’s degree from the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, and Museology Certification from the Burke Museum. She began her love of sharing art by being trained with the Seattle Art Museum as an art docent 25 years ago and has expanded on that to work as an art docent and artist-in-residance in various schools and summer camps in the Pacific Northwest. Koloud is regularly active in her community, having been appointed twice as an Arts Commissioner for the City of Redmond by the Mayor and served twice as Board Director of the Arab Center of Washington. Koloud began introducing Arab tales to children as a storyteller at local libraries and festivals 8 years ago. Last March, she opened a pop up BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) bookstore that benefited a refugee non-profit. Koloud founded ACraftyArab.com in 2008, a blog of fun, free, educational crafts, downloads, book lists and recipes for children and their caregivers. Her crafts can also be found on Multicultural Kid Blog and she is excited to be asked to co-Host the Multicultural Children’s Book Day once again. Her company also sells a line of educational products for teaching Arabic, including an alphabet poster, color poster, game cards, magnets, and a coloring book. Her line can be found online on Zibbet, Teachers Pay Teachers, Amazon and can also be found at the Smithsonian African Art Museum and Jerusalem Fund in Washington DC.

Nadya Tannous

‫انداي طنوس‬

Nadya is a passionate community organizer and writer, born and raised in the Bay Area, with a focus on refugee rights, transitional justice, youth education, and inter-community empowerment. She is a board member of the Palestinian Youth Movement –USA and core member of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship committee. Nadya holds an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Anthropology and Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies from UC Santa Cruz. She is an editor in the Peñasco Vignette Collective.

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Dareen Tatour

‫دارين طاطور‬

Dareen Tatour is a Palestinian poet, photographer, and social media activist from Reineh, Palestine, who writes in Arabic. In 2010 she published a poetry book entitled “The Last Invasion”. And she has published her work on Facebook, and YouTube. In October 2015, Tatour published a poem on YouTube and Facebook titled “Qawem Ya Shaabi Qawemahum” (“Resist my people, resist them”),where the words were cited as the soundtrack to images of Palestinians in violent confrontations with Israeli troops. Israeli police arrested her over this poem, imprisoned her on charges of “incitement to violence,” for which she was sentenced to five months in jail and years under house arrest.

Fargo Tbakhi

‫فارغو طباخي‬

Fargo Tbakhi (he/him) is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist. He is the winner of the 2018 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Tin House Summer Workshop alum.

His writing is published or forthcoming in Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Foglifter, Hobart, The Shallow Ends, Mizna, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, and has received support from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. He is currently a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow and works at Mosaic Theater.

Mark Tilsen

‫مارك تيلسن‬

Mark k. Tilsen is an Oglala Lakota Poet Educator from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

He comes from activist families long steeped in the struggle for liberation for all people and the long term survival of the Lakota Nation. At Standing Rock he stepped into the role of a direct action trainer and police liaison. Since then he has led trainings and teachins about the lessons learned from Standing Rock. He has spent months at the L’eau est La Vie Camp helping fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline which is the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline ending in Louisiana. His first book of poetry, It Ain’t Over Until We’re Smoking Cigars on the Drill Pad recalls the struggle against the pipeline through a blend of journal entries and poems.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

‫لينا خلف تفاحة‬

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha has lived the experiences of first-generation American, immigrant, and expatriate. Her heritage is Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian and she is fluent in Arabic and English, and has academic proficiency in French. She has lived in and traveled across the Arab world, and many of her poems are inspired by the experience of crossing cultural, geographic and political borders, borders between languages, between the present and the living past.

Lena writes poetry, essays and translations. Her first book of poems, Water and Salt (Red Hen Press) won the 2018 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. She is the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize for her chapbook Arab in Newsland. Her essays have been published in the Seattle Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, and Kenyon Review Online. She translated the screenplay for the multi award-winning feature film When I Saw You, written and directed by Annemarie Jacir, and she also translated I Am A Guest on This Earth by Iraqi poet Faiza Sultan, published by Dar Safi Press. Lena’s poems have been published in print and online journals including Magnolia, Blackbird, Barrow Street, the Taos Journal for International Poetry and Art, Diode, Floating Bridge Review, Mizna, Borderlands: Texas Review and Sukoon. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Several of her poems have been anthologized: “Running Orders,” published in Letters to Palestine: American Writers Respond to War and Occupation, by Verso Press, “Seafaring Nocturne,” published in Gaza Unsilenced by Just World Books, “Altered States” published in Bettering American Poetry Volume 2 by Bettering Books, “Fragment,” published in Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by Refugees by Olive Branch Press, “Immigrant,” published in Ink Knows No Borders by Triangle Square Press and “Elegy” published in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me by Haymarket Books.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Rawan Yaghi

‫روان ايغي‬

Rawan Yaghi came to the US with a Fulbright grant to study at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She grew up in Gaza where she started writing short fiction.

She contributed to the youth lead anthology Gaza Writes Back and the outstanding sci-fi collection Palestine +100. Beyond fiction, she has written for The Link, The New York Times, and Mondoweiss.

Anan Zahr

‫عنان زهر‬

Anan Zahr is an Arab Palestinian American living in the US since the age of 11. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Near Eastern Studies and attended graduate school at West Chester University in the Department of Education. Anan has worked as an Arabic Language Instructor and owned and operated a Mediterranean restaurant (Olive Tree Mediterranean Gourmet) in Wilmington, DE for five years. As a long-time resident of the Philadelphia area, Anan is a dedicated community activist involved with a number of national and local organizations.

Amer Zahr

‫عامر زهر‬

Amer Zahr is an Palestinian-American comedian, speaker, writer, and adjunct professor at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. He has headlined packed houses at New York City’s world-famous Carnegie Hall and the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. He is the founder of producer of the “1001 Laughs Ramallah Comedy Festival,” a production in Palestine, as well as the annual “1001 Laughs Dearborn Comedy Festival” in Dearborn, Michigan. He is also the producer, writer, and star of We’re Not White, a documentary that takes a comedic and informative approach to the ArabAmerican struggle to get a box on the United States Census Form. Amer is the author of the well-read blog The Civil Arab. Amer holds an MA in Middle East Studies and a JD, both from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He is also a national surrogate for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders He writes and speaks widely on political and social affairs, and has appeared on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and Al-Jazeera.

Rafeef Ziadah

‫رفيف زايدة‬

Rafeef is a Palestinian spoken word artist, academic and human rights activist based in London, UK. Her performances of poems like ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ and ‘Shades of Anger’ went viral within days of release. Her live readings offer a moving blend of poetry and music. Since releasing her first album, Hadeel — Rafeef has headlined prestigious performance venues across several countries with readings on war, exile, gender and racism. She received the Ontario Arts Council Grant from the Word of Mouth programme to create this debut album. We Teach Life, her second album, was a powerful collection of spoken word with original music compositions, which she brings to the stage with Australian guitarist and producer Phil Monsour. She regularly conducts spoken word workshops with the aim of empowering expression through writing and performance. She was chosen to represent Palestine at the South Bank Centre Poets Olympiad in 2012. She will be releasing her latest album Three Generations at Palestine Writes festival.

BEYOND EVERY HORIZON IS AN OPEN HORIZON. LIFE IS ALWAYS IN REPETITION, THOUGHT IN DIVERSITY, AND ART IN REGENERATION.” May Ziadeh palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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Venue Images

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Program

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

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DECEMBER 2

DECEMBER 3

DECEMBER 4

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DECEMBER 5

DECEMBER 6

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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WEDNESDAY 9:00 AM

DECEMBER 2, 2020

9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

ALL TIMES ARE LISTED IN EASTERN STANDARD TIME.

HAIFA HALL

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Reception The “doors” are open for registrants to enter, look around the 3-D site, peruse clickables (videos, banners, images), visit vendor and partner booths, check out the art exhibit, bookstore, and festival swag, and explore the schedule of events to mark your calendars and perhaps invite friends who haven’t yet registered.

INTERVIEWS CHILDREN’S PROGRAMMING WORKSHOPS PERFORMANCES

HAIFA HALL

Welcome & Opening Remarks Festival committee member, Susan Muaddi Darraj will open the festival with a welcome, housekeeping and announcements, and introductions to the co-chairs, susan abulhawa and Bill Mullen. Bill Mullen, followed by susan abulhawa will give opening remarks.

12:45 PM – 1:15 PM

CHILDREN’S TENT

Me & My Family: Storytime the ArabishWay During this fun and engaging storytime, you will learn parts of your body and some names of family members in Arabic while enjoying stories in a colloquial Levantine dialect, hear songs in Arabic and do a fun craft. Geared for ages 3 to 6 but great for all ages.

12:45 PM – 1:30 PM

1:00 PM

1:00 PM – 2:15 PM

Laila Taji

Ghada Karmi

HAIFA HALL

4:00 PM – 4:45 PM

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Ayah El-Fahmawi

Remi Kanazi

Fargo Tbakhi

Rafeef Ziadeh

Ibrahim Nasrallah

Fady Joudeh

Mark Tilsen

Jamila Osman

Tariq Luthun

Dareen Tatour

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Tahani Saleh

CHILDREN’S TENT

Arabic Initial Wrapping Paper: A Crafty Arab Create personalized wrapping paper, with the recipient’s initial from the Arabic alphabet, to make your wrapped gift really stand out. Join artist and educator Koloud Tarapolsi as she goes through the steps you’ll need to make a special day even more memorable!

4:45 pm

Mahmoud Shqeir

HAIFA HALL

Palestine in Parallel: Poetry Performance Featuring Palestinian, African and Indigenous American, men and women, young and younger poets, this session is meant to showcase the varied forms of poetry, performed or recited verses in both English and Arabic.

4:00 PM

Ibrahim Nasrallah

MODERATOR

2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

Bill Mullen

A hauntingly written, remorselessly honest, and surely long lasting account of Palestinian loss and struggle.” — Donald MacIntyre, Independent

Literature in the Time of Erasure Renowned Palestinian authors will discuss what does it mean to write in a world that denies or trivializes your existence? How does erasure influence creative productions? How does creative production influence erasure?

2:30 PM

Susan Abulhawa

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: Return: A Palestinian Memoir

Materials needed: scissors, glue, a shaker/maraca. *printouts & instructions available

Bill Mullen

MODERATOR

12:45 PM

Susan Muaddi Darraj

AUTHOR

12:00 PM – 12:30 PM

4:00 PM – 4:45 PM

Coffee & Books Book: The Parisian Koloud Tarapolsi

Supplies: pencil with new erasure, double sided tape, Kraft wrapping paper, scissors, exacto, sharpie, ink stamp.

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

NAZARETH HALL

AUTHOR

12:00 PM

Dazzling… A deeply imagined historical novel with none of the usual Isabella Hammad cobwebs of the genre… Exquisite.” ― New York Times Book Review

Zaha Hassan

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4:30 PM

4:30 PM – 5:00 PM

JERICHO HALL

Cooking Demonstration Nasser Jaber and Alex Hernandez will demonstrate a Pastelon Mashi dish, a Palestinian-Mexican fusion meal of stuffed plantain based on Levantine mahshi with jackfruit.

5:30 PM

5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

6:45 PM – 8:00 PM

Nitasha Dhillon & Amin Husain

JERICHO HALL

Tatreez In this 2-hour virtual workshop, students will learn Palestinian tatreez (embroidery), with origins in Palestine since the 16th century, with iconographical significance that dates back to Chinese symbols found around 5000 BC. Limit 12 people.

Participants must obtain supplies listed here: https:// www.tatreezandtea.com/ supplies

1:15PM

10:00 AM – 10:45 PM

Coffee & Books Book: Mapping My Return, A Palestinian Memoir

NAZARETH HALL

12:00 PM – 1:15 PM

Samlam AbuSitta

Nur Masalha

Abu Sitta’s memoir conveys a still burning sense of outrage at the injustice of the dispossession of the Palestinians and the denial of their rights — a personal and collective Nakba without end. ― Ian Black, The Guardian

11:00 AM – 11:45 PM

CHILDREN’S TENT

Farah Rocks Fifth Grade Award winning author will read from Book 1 in her chapter book series, Farah Rocks, in a fun session filled with crafts and storytelling.

Susan Muaddi Darraj

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: The Book of Disappearance

Ibtisam Azem

Marcia Lynx Qualev

HAIFA HALL

Architects of Our Narrative: Emerging Palestinian Writers (Panel & Award) A panel featuring past and present finalists of the Ghassan Kanafani Scholarship will discuss their journey to writing and reflections on narrative in the Palestinian diaspora. An award will be presented in collaboration with the Palestine Youth Movement & the Kevorkian Center.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

10:15 AM – 10:45 AM

Ibtisam Azem has gifted us with a poignant, mysterious, lyrical, new novel.” ― Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love

Wafa Ghnaim

12:00 PM

Jasbir K. Puar J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

A VIRTUAL EVENT

MODERATOR

11:15 AM

Ayah El-Fahmawi

DECEMBER 3, 2020

AUTHOR

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Tariq Luthun

HAIFA HALL

8:00 PM

10:00 AM

AUTHOR

Tariq Luthun’s poems are vulnerable confessions and whispered conversations about becoming, and continuing to become, a young man, a Palestinian, an immigrant, a witness, and a fighter.” ― Noura Erakat, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine

Organizing & Boycott in the Cultural Sphere Panelists will discuss the challenges of organizing among cultural workers.

In particular, issues surrounding cultural boycott and engagement of artists in liberation struggles will be examined

THURSDAY

Faisal Saleh

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: How the Water Holds Me

6:45 PM

Samia Halaby

AUTHOR

6:15 PM – 7:00 PM

Alex Hernandez

HAIFA HALL

Narrating the Kufr Qassem Massacre Renowned artist, Samia Halaby, will narrate the stories of the families who survived the Kufr Qassem massacre through her drawings, and in conversation with Faisal Saleh, founder and director of the Palestine Museum.

6:15 PM

Nasser Jaber

Voulette Hattar

Maysam Ghani, Mohammad El-Kurd Nadya Tannous

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1:00 PM

1:00 PM – 1:30 PM

CHILDREN’S TENT

Storytime with Lisa Suhair Maja Scholar, poet, and fiction writer Lisa Suhair Majaj will read from her children’s book, Naila Shares a Story, and discuss the book’s background and inspiration.

Lisa Suhair Majaj

HAIFA HALL MODERATOR

1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

SciFi Palestine This panel will discuss the genre of science fiction literature, inviting a conversation on Emergent Strategy, a sci-fi social justice model that has developed since 2014.

3:00 PM – 4:15 PM

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Saleem Haddad

Vivian Sansour

Leila El-Haddad

Nasser Jaber

Mirna Bamieh

Naomu Shehab Nye

4:45 PM – 5:30 PM

Ahman Qabaha

CHILDREN’S TENT

Playground of Poetry with Naomi Shihab Nye A conversation with US Poet Laureate for Children and Young Adults, Naomi Shihab Nye. Moderated by Ibtisam Barakat. Ages 10-15

4:45 PM

Ebony Coletu

HAIFA HALL

Food Sovereignty This panel of food writers, chefs, seed archivists and culinary historians will explore the importance of preserving culinary traditions, particularly as colonizers claim those traditions as their own.

4:15 PM

Ibtisam Azem

MODERATOR

3:00 PM

Rawan Yaghi

MODERATOR

1:30 PM

Ibtisam Barakat

JERICHO HALL

Comedy Cooking Amer Zahr and his mother, Anan Zahr, will prepare a surprise authentic Palestinian vegan meal, with a side of comedy.

Amer Zahr

5:15 PM – 6:00 PM

5:30 PM

Coffee & Books Book: Beauty of Your Face “A story of survival and hope, forgiveness and connection.

— Elisabeth Egan, New York Times Book Review

6:00 PM

6:00 PM – 6:45 PM

NAZARETH HALL 5:30 PM – 6:00 PM AUTHOR

5:15 PM

Anan Zahr

Sahar Mustafah

Susan Muaddi Darraj

CHILDREN’S TENT

Recycled Cup Darbuka: A Crafty Arab Create a darbuka, a drum with a goblet shaped body, so you can pretend to play along with Arabic music. Join artist and educator Koloud Tarapolsi as she goes through the steps you’ll need to make a unique instrument that is played all over the Arab world! Supplies: Paper cups, Sharpie (fine and ultra fine),

Koloud Tarapolsi

Paintbrush, Brown Acrylic Paint, Masking tape, Paper towel

HAIFA HALL

Music Named Jordan’s Musican Ambassador, Farah’s ethereal and haunting voice is matched only by her profound lyrics. She will perform songs that yearn for a gentler world and reach for our common humanity.

6:45 PM

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Farah Siraj

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FRIDAY

10:30 AM

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: Salt Houses Moving and beautifully written.”

— Entertainment Weekly

11:30 AM

Hala Alayan

Coffee & Books Book: Praise for the Women of the Family Elegant and captivating novel.”

— This Week in Palestine

Mahmoud Shqeir

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM

Ayah El-Fahmawi

NAZARETH HALL

11:00 AM – 11:45 AM

AUTHOR

11:00 AM

10:30 AM – 11:30AM

AUTHOR

10:00 AM

DECEMBER 4, 2020

The Memory Factory: How To Write A Story From An Old Family Photograph A workshop with Ahlam Bsharat, ages 12-18 years old. (instructions: Please have on hand a pen/paper and an old photograph from the family album. This can be of a group of people or just one person, perhaps a grandparent.).

Nur Masalha

HAIFA HALL

2:45 PM – 4:00 PM

4:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Iasmin Omar Ata

MODERATOR

Huzama Habayeb

Bill Mullen

Robin D. G. Kelley

Rami Abushehab

Ghada Karmi

Ibtisam Barakat

Massoud Hayoun

Maha Nassar

HAIFA HALL

Memoir & Family Biography Suarez will speak with prominent memoirists and family biographers about their craft — individual processes and motivations; the significance of biography and memoir in literature, reader responses to their specific works, and more.

4:00 PM

Marguerite Debaie

HAIFA HALL

The Parallel Lives of Ghassan Kanafani & James Baldwin This panel will explore the lives of James Baldwin and Ghassan Kanafani, and how their lives intersected even though they never met each other. Discussion would touch on their intersections, how far ahead of their time they were, their moral fortitude, dignity, and how they brought all of that to profoundly moving literary prose, both fiction and nonfiction.

2:45 PM

Mohammad Sabaaneh

MODERATOR

1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Ahlam Bsharat

Limit 10 people

Graphic Novel Workshop Palestinian graphic novelists and comic artists will discuss the strengths of comics and visual storytelling in the context of Palestine, and the particular challenges that Palestinian comic artists face in the comics community. Topics will include how we have mobilized and politicized our comics community around Palestine, the importance of by-us-for-us storytelling when it comes to Palestine, and the power of visuals and comics in movements and liberation struggles.

1:00 PM

CHILDREN’S TENT

Tom Suarez

CHILDREN’S TENT

Colors: Storytime the ArabishWay During this fun and engaging learning opportunity, you will hear the colors in Arabic while enjoying stories in a colloquial Levantine dialect, hear songs in Arabic and do a fun craft. Geared for ages 3 to 6 but great for all ages.

Materials needed: colored paper, scissors, large 11 x 17 paper, pencil, and glue stick. *printouts & instructions available

Laila Taji

4:30 PM

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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4:15 PM – 5:30 PM

HAIFA HALL MODERATOR

4:15 PM

The Cost of Solidarity Three distinguished scholars will discuss the private and public impact of upholding Palestinian humanity, and what reading Palestinian literature has meant to them.

7:00 PM – 8:15 PM

Nick Estes

Sophia Azeb

David Palumbo-Liu

George Abraham

Zaina Arafat

HAIFA HALL

Cultural Dislocation & Dissonance This panel will touch on the phenomenon of writing one’s identity and culture in a language and/or land that are foreign to that culture. In other words, what is it like to write in English about the very identity and culture that has been tortured and violated by the culture and language you’re communicating in.

7:00 PM

Steven Salaita

MODERATOR

5:30 PM – 6:45 PM

Marc Lamont Hill

Fady Joudeh

HAIFA HALL

Writing Palestinian Queerness: Literature, poetry, & film Moderated by acclaimed author and scholar, Sa’ed Atshan, this panel will discuss the importance, beauties, pitfalls, challenges, and examples of writing Palestinian queerness.

MODERATOR

5:30 PM

Susan Abulhawa

Sa’ed Atshan

8:15 PM

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM JERICHO HALL

10:30 AM

Tatreez Based on demand, in this 2-hour virtual workshop, students will learn Palestinian tatreez, with origins in Palestine since the 16th century, with iconographical significance that dates back to Chinese symbols found around 5000 BC. Limit 12 people.

Participants must obtain supplies listed here: https://www.tatreezandtea.com/supplies

10:00 AM – 11:15 AM

Children’s & YA Literature This panel will touch on issues of representation in literature aimed at young audiences—in particular, what it means to Susan Muaddi Darraj raise children amidst popular cultural images that do not speak to their realities. Panelists will talk about their own experiences in creating books that reflect the lives of Palestinian children. The panel will also talk about creating books that offset the consumerist individualism, which are promulgated in most popular children’s venues.

10:30 PM – 11:15 AM

Coffee & Books Book: My Damascus

11:00 AM – 11:30 AM

11:00 AM

Wafa Ghnaim

HAIFA HALL

Lisa Majaj

Daoud Kuttab MODERATOR

10:00 AM

DECEMBER 5, 2020

Taghreed Najjar

Diana Battu

NAZARETH HALL A powerful, soulful tribute to a Damascene family and to the city itself.”

— Marcy Newman

AUTHOR

SATURDAY

Suad Amiry

Malini Schueller

CHILDREN’S TENT

Numbers & Days: Storytime the Arabish During this fun and engaging learning opportunity, you will hear the Arabic numbers from wa-had to it-na’aesh while enjoying stories in a colloquial Levantine dialect, hear songs in Arabic and do a fun craft. Geared for ages 3 to 6 but great for all ages.

Materials needed: paper plate, scissors, colors (crayons, markers or pencils), glue stick, brad fastener, something sharp to make a hole in the paper plate. *printouts & instructions available

Laila Taji

12:00 PM

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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HAIFA HALL

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM

Rewriting the World This panel will discuss the ways in which women have transformed, enriched and revolutionized literature, and what that has meant to readers and our perception of the world. Panelists will also explore the limitations and expectations placed on women in art. It will also include discussions not only of a male gaze, but of a white gaze, which dominates the publishing industry.

12:30 PM

12:30 PM – 1:00 PM

MODERATOR

11:30 AM

Nathalie Handal

Shailja Patel

Neferti X. M. Tadiar

CHILDREN’S TENT

Animals: Storytime the ArabishWay During this fun and engaging storytime, you will learn the names of animals in Arabic while enjoying stories in a colloquial Levantine dialect, hear songs in Arabic and do a fun craft. Geared for ages 3 to 6 but great for all ages.

Materials needed: scissors, glue, paper plate, pencil, large red, small yellow and small black paper. *printouts & instructions available

HAIFA HALL

Translation & Publication This panel will explore the scarcity of English translations of Arab writers, discuss experiences with translation, publication, distribution and sales. It will examine the social, political, and literary roadblocks and offer ideas.

2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

Throughout this book, it is the human experience that stands out, elsewhere discarded to make space for the politics that have disrupted and ruptured Palestinian lives.”

— Middle East Monitor

3:45 PM – 4:15 PM

Michel Mushabek

Nancy Krikorian

Atef AlAshaer

Bill Mullen

HAIFA HALL

Nature Under Settler Colonialism This panel will discuss the ways in which nature is — and has been — altered under settler colonialism.

Presenters will discuss their own work on this topic as it pertains to Palestine in particular.

3:45 PM

Ra Page

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: A Map of Absence

2:30 PM

Mahmoud Muna

MODERATOR

2:00 PM

MODERATOR

1:00 PM – 2:15 PM

AUTHOR

1:00 PM

Laila Taji

Andrew Ross

Rabea Eghbariah

Rana Baker

Raja Shehadeh

Samer Abboud

CHILDREN’S TENT

Shared Reading, with Arwa Nasir Dr. Arwa Nasir will do a bilingual (Arabic and English) storybook reading of some of her children’s books, including A Visit to the Doctor, as well as discuss the benefits of shared reading.

Arwa Nasir

4:00 PM – 5:15 PM

HAIFA HALL

Cultural Appropriation Panelists will discuss what this term means and the ways it manifests in literature, art, music, and culinary heritage, in order to erase the historic keepers of these traditions, at the same time those traditions themselves are being perverted.

MODERATOR

4:00 PM

Mark Tilsen

Tariq Luthun

Ryan Opalanietet Pierce

Kalamaoka’aina Niheu

Adam Miyashiro

5:15 PM

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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5:30 PM

HAIFA HALL

5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Odyssey of Hope : Film Screening & Discussion with Director Ahmed Mansour Film Screening & Discussion with Director Ahmed Mansour. Odyssey of Hope is the story of a Palestinian family trying to reunite after seven years of forced separation as a result of the Israeli offensive against Gaza in 2014.

Ahmad Mansour 6:45 PM

6:45 PM – 7:15 PM

HAIFA HALL

Shadia Mansour Concert Famed hip hop artist Shadia Mansour will perform a set, featuring DJ Snuff.

Shadia Mansour 7:00 PM

7:00 PM – 8:00 PM

JERICHO HALL

Culture Jamming Workshop This workshop is about public political art. Advertising For the People creates works to disrupt and/or subvert mainstream culture and dominant and deceptive messaging to support movements. We’ll share work designed to counter Pinkwashing, quell Islamophobic hate speech on public transit, and to support BDS in general. We’ll also give you some tips on how to do this work yourself. In the second half of the workshop we’ll break into groups to discuss methods and tactics to support movement work in your orbit.

Andrew Kadi

Dunya Alwan

8:00 PM

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM

NAZARETH HALL

Coffee & Books Book: The Lanterns of the King of Galilee

10:15 AM – 10:45 AM

10:15 AM

Nasrallah presents us with many gifts: a sympathetic but realistic image of a major figure in Palestinian history who deserves to be far better known; a portrayal of a little-explored period in Palestine; and a deeply enjoyable novel in which to encounter these things.”

— The Electronic Intifada

11:30 AM

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Ibrahim Nasrallah

Rabab Abdelhadi

Farah Rocks Summer Break Susan Muaddi Darraj will read and discuss Book 2 in her chapter book series, the first in English to feature a Palestinian American character.

12:15 PM – 12:45 PM

Susan Muaddi Darraj

HAIFA HALL

Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel Rachel Holmes, one of the most talented and accomplished biographers of our time, will speak with susan abulhawa about her most recent book, Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel—a vivid and powerful biography of one of the most extraordinary women of the 20th century. Sylvia Pankhurst was a feminist and socialist, whose radical compassion ushered women’s suffrage, labor rights, and internationalist solidarity.

12:15 PM

CHILDREN’S TENT

AUTHOR

10:00 AM

DECEMBER 6, 2020 AUTHOR

SUNDAY

Rachel Holmes

Susan Abulhawa

CHILDREN’S TENT

Dabke Dancers Paper Bags: A Crafty Arab Make these adorable dabke dancers from recycling your paper lunch bags. Dabke is a folk-dance native to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Join artist and educator Koloud Tarapolsi as she goes through the steps you’ll need to repurpose your school lunch bag into a keffiyeh wearing dabke dancer, with moving body parts!

Koloud Tarapolsi

Supplies: Paper lunch bag, Hole Punch, Glue, Double sided tape, Sharpie, Scissors, Metal brads, Card stock paper in beige, green, white and red.

12:45 PM

palestine writes LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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12:45 PM

12:45 PM – 1:45 PM

HAIFA HALL

Palestinian Cinema On stage interview between acclaimed Palestinian filmmaker, Mai Masri, and award-winning journalist Victoria Brittain. This session will also discuss the history and status of Palestinian cinema, including recent leaps in this genre of storytelling, which has seen multiple Oscar nominations, Canne Festival Awards and other accolades bestowed upon them.

1:30 PM

1:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Mai Masri

Victoria Brittian

CHILDREN’S TENT

Palestine Landscape Notebook: A Crafty Arab Make your notebooks distinctive by decorating their covers with images of a Palestinian landscape, that includes the various religions in this holy land. Join artist and educator Koloud Tarapolsi as she goes through the steps you’ll need to draw a beautiful landscape of harmony.

Koloud Tarapolsi

Supplies: Composition notebook, Sharpie, Scissors, Duct tape (any solid color)

1:45 PM – 2:00 PM

HAIFA HALL

Letter from Khalida Jarrar Letter from Khalida Jarrar, read by her daughters Suah and Yafa, about culture, literature; and also thanking writers, scholars, intellectuals, artists, etc. for refusing normalization.

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

3:45 PM

3:30 PM – 3:45PM

Yafa Jarrar

HAIFA HALL

Keynote: Culture, Solidarity, & Internationalism For the first time ever, legendary cultural figures and life-long champions for universal dignity on three separate continents—Angela Davis, Hanan Ashrawi, and Richard Falk—will share a stage together in conversation about the intersections of culture with moral evolution and global solidarity.

3:30 PM

Suha Jarrar

MODERATOR

2:00 PM

Khalida Jarrar

Angela Davis

Hanan Ashrawi

Richard Falk

Susan Abulhawa

MODERATOR

1:45 PM

Bill V. Mullen

HAIFA HALL

Closing Remarks

Special thank you to UMake for managing all the technology for this program.

DECEMBER 2 – 6, 2020

A VIRTUAL EVENT

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Art Exhibit

Thank you from Palestine Writes Literature Festival This festival was made possible through the generous support of donors and sponsors. We are enormously grateful to each and every one, no matter how small the contribution. Gifts from the institutions and individuals listed below made up the bulk of the festival’s funding. Thank you all for believing in us, for helping us showcase the brilliant imaginative labor of this year’s participants, and for not shying away from supporting an endeavor that includes the ancient and beautiful name “Palestine.”

Individuals Mohammad Salhoot

Hani & Syma Qattan

Eissa A. Bateh

Loai Najjar

Moiz & Stephanie Mustafa

Linda Hanna

Dr. Nabil Qaddumi

Hania Farah

Manal Fakhoury

Karen Konzen

Amar Masri

Dr. Aziz Shaiban

Taghreed Najjar

Michael Kardoush