This year’s Palestine Festival of Literature, popularly known as PalFest, will take place in six cities across historic Palestine from May 23 to 30:
Public events are scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. on May 25 in Ramallah’s Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre with “Readings and words” from three authors: novelist and PalFest founder Ahdaf Soueif, poet and critic Ahmad Dahbour, and novelist Gillian Slovo. The evening will also feature a musical interpretation of passages of Slovo’s Red Dust.
Events on May 27 will take place simultaneously in Jerusalem and Gaza, after which the festival will travel to Haifa (May 28), Nablus (May 29), and back to Ramallah (May 30). The final events on the schedule are on May 31 in Birzeit — a “Festival of Stories and Strange Creatures.”
This year’s participating literary luminaries include award-winning poet Tom Warner, who is currently at work on a translation of poet Nouri al-Jarrah; acclaimed novelist China Miéville; poet Najwan Darwish, who is also PalFest’s literary adviser; translator, writer, and long-time LRB contributor Jeremy Harding; acclaimed journalist and memoirist Basharat Peer; short-story writer and novelist Aamer Hussein; and playwright Omar al-Khairy.
ArabLit will also be tagging along, and I very much hope I will do all right in covering the fest for you.
You can also follow @PalFest on twitter, and I believe the official hashtag is #PalFest13.
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