Friday, September 29, 7 pm
Admission: Free, but please RSVP
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2023 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Worker-owned independent publisher Radix Media is proud to bring together a multidisciplinary gathering of Arab American authors for an illuminating, freewheeling panel at the City Reliquary Museum.
In the contentious battleground of political America, Arab American writers have strived to drown out the divisive rhetoric through compelling, evocative portraits of life in the Arab world, diasporic ache, and subversion of embedded stereotypes. We meet with five Arab American writers to learn the narratives that guide their work, how they write and recollect in America, and the place Arab American literature occupies in the larger literary zeitgeist.
Featuring authors Andrea Abi-Karam, George Abraham, Hala Alyan, Zein El-Amine, and Nadia Shammas. Poet and author Ghinwa Jawhari will be moderating the event.
Artist Bios:
ANDREA ABI-KARAM is a trans, arab-american punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). Their second book, Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021) reimagines militant collectivity in the wake of the Ghost Ship Fire and the Muslim Ban. They are currently working on a poet’s novel.
George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are currently executive editor for Mizna, and are a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, The Arab American National Museum, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, National Performance Network, and more. They are currently co-editing a Palestinian global anglophone poetry anthology with Noor Hindi (Haymarket Books, 2024) and are a Litowitz MFA+MA candidate at Northwestern University.
Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel The Arsonists’ City was published in March 2021 and was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Literary Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter, where she works as a clinical psychologist.
Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy In Focus, CityLit, and others. His latest poetry manuscript A Travel Guide for the Exiled was recently shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. His short stories have appeared in the Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and in Bound Off. His debut short story collection, Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? was published by Radix Media and was a longlist for the PEN Awards Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Fiction.
Nadia Shammas is an award-winning Palestinian-American writer and game developer originally from Brooklyn, New York, now living in Toronto, Ontario. She is best known for SQUIRE (co-created with Sara Alfageeh), a young adult Middle Eastern fantasy graphic novel published by HarperCollins and winner of the 2022 Harvey Award for Best Children’s or Young Adult Book. She is also the writer and co-creator of WHERE BLACK STARS RISE (co-created with Marie Enger), an adult eldritch Arab horror graphic novella. Her work often focuses on power, the formation of identity, and the body. Most recently, she worked as a narrative designer on the upcoming Outerloop Studios game THIRSTY SUITORS. When not writing, she enjoys ceramics, fiber arts, and her cats, Dash and Lilith.
Ghinwa Jawhari is a Lebanese American writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her debut chapbook BINT (2021) was selected for Radix Media’s Own Voices Chapbook Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, she is the founding editor of Koukash Review. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear in Catapult, Mizna, The Adroit Journal, Rusted Radishes, The Margins, Narrative, and elsewhere. More at ghinwajawhari.com / IG @bbghanouj