The Latest

This story comes from Hussein al-Abri’s latest collection, Time Slips Away in the Corner (2026).

Mostafa Khraïef (1910-1967) was a prominent Tunisian poet, writer, and journalist.

A story from the fall of 1983 by the scribe of Basra, Muhammad Khudayyir.

There are events around the world this September 25-27 celebrating the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, after the Arab World Institute and Centre Pompidou declared September 25 to be “Mahmoud Darwish Poetry Day.”

“I’m sitting alone in my room / my clothes scattered around me”

Nour Balousha wrote these two poems “after I stopped screaming, not because it ended, but because I grew too exhausted to keep screaming.”

“Music is one of the arts most connected to place, as it is a physical vibration in a space.”

The Book of Damascus, ed. Zaher Omareen, is a new anthology in their “Reading the City” series. Here, editor Zaher Omareen talks with Fifi Bat-hef about selecting ten stories to represent a city as complex and storied as Damascus.

In this conversation, Hooda Shawa offers inspiring insight into her experience writing such a personal and powerful novel as well as herself as an author.

“In her poetry world, the sun is red. The moon is purple. Snow is ubiquitous. Winter is eternal.”

“The word eib rings in my head, it is eib to love, to sing, to get sick, to divorce, to show your emotions…and.…and. I felt these social chains were burdening me with fear, despair, and confusion, and I almost abandoned work on the book, but when I looked at the materials that I had collected, I knew that if I didn’t publish it now, it would never be published.”