October 2015: Global Arab and Arabic Literary Events Calendar

Events in some form of translation. Please email with yours or add below:

October 1

First Annual Cairo Comix Festival (Cairo, Egypt)

Opens September 30 and runs through October 3. More here.

Mashrabia Garage Sale (Cairo, Egypt)

Mashrabia Gallery selling  artworks, art books, magazines, posters, and postcards, from 1-8 October. On  8 Champolion Street, Downtown Cairo.

“Poetry and Freedom: A Conversation with Adonis” (Greencastle, USA)

Adonis’s talk will be at DePauw University’s Prindle Institute for Ethics. It begins at 4:15 p.m. More here.

October 2

Iraqi Literature at the Internazionale Festival (Ferrara, Italy)

Ahmad Saadawi, Inaam Kachachi and Hassan Blasim will be at the Internazionale Festival October 2-4 to talk about how the Iraqi literature can (or can’t) narrate contemporary Iraq. More here.

October 3

ReOrient Theatre Forum (San Francisco, USA)

Forum presentations include “Project Alo?” an international mobile video play, which has theatre artists collaborating across borders via one-minute video clips captured on their cell phones; “Divided Stages: 50 Years of Performing Iran in the U.S.”; a panel on queering intersections in Middle Eastern diasporic communities; and a panel on “Theatre Between Home and Exile: New Palestinian Voices.” According to organizers, the two-day event will be livestreamed on Howlround.com. More here.

October 4

Ibtisam Azem Reads from Sariq al-Nawm (Washington, D.C., USA)

Ibtisam Azem will read from her novel Sariq al-Nawm from 2-3.15 pm as part of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival 2015. The event will be held at the Goethe Institut in Chinatown and moderated by Dr. Dima Ayoub.

Al-Ain Reads Festival Opens (Al-Ain, UAE)

Runs through October 10. More here.

October 5

“Whatever Happened to ‘Harry Potter’ in Arabic?” (Cairo, Egypt)

Rebab Saad El Domiati, AUC’s Director of Media Relations, talks at 1 p.m. on Monday, October 5 at the AUC’s New Campus.

Mariam Bazeed Reads at the Bowery Poetry Club (NYC, USA)

Egyptian poet and writer Mariam Bazeed, a Kuwait-born Egyptian writer, editor, and singer living in Brooklyn, is the featured poet at the Bowery Poetry Club. She writes fiction, prose poetry, memoir, and has begun translating literary works from Arabic into English. More here.

October 7

Discussion of ‘Bitter Almonds’ by Lilas Taha (Amman, Jordan)

Join 7iber for a book discussion with the Syrian novelist Lilas Taha to talk about her new novel Bitter Almonds, Wednesday 7 October, 6:30pm at Sakeyat AdDaraweesh. More here.

A Celebration of Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (NYC, USA)

At the Linney Theatre, Signature Theatre Center, 480 West 42nd St., NYC, NY, starting at 5:30 p.m. More here.

October 8

Library of Arabic Literature’s Paperback Launch with Amitav Ghosh, Elias Khoury, Sinan Antoon (NYC, USA) 

The launch is set for the Center for Fiction on October 8, where LAL General Editor Philip Kennedy and author and professor Dame Marina Warner will moderate a conversation with celebrated novelists Amitav Ghosh, Elias Khoury, and Sinan Antoon about “the richness of the Arabic literary heritage, the thriving contemporary Arabic literary scene, the challenges of translating Arabic literature for contemporary English-language readers,” as well as the contributions of LAL. More here.

October 13

The Heart of the Matter: Words of War, Words of Loss (NYC, USA)

According to organizers: “Poetry has always been central to Arabic cultural expression. Today it encompasses the whirlwind of events sweeping across the Middle East, serving to mourn tragedy, and to articulate political fantasies. Robyn Creswell, co-author of the New Yorker article “Why Jihadists Write Poetry,” and Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail, who fled her country after being put on Sadaam Hussein’s enemies list, discuss poetry as a way to understand contemporary Arab society. A book signing will follow the program.” More here.

October 16

Laila Lalami Reads from ‘The Moor’s Account’ (St. Paul, USA)

Mizna presents a reading from Laila Lalami on Friday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m. at the MN State Fairgrounds. More here.

October 12

Stories from the Bedouin Epic of Banu Hilali, by Chirine El Ansary (London, England)

“This epic cycle recounts how the Banu Hilali Bedouin tribe – hit by famine – travelled northwards from the Arabian peninsula, traversed the Levant, crossed the Sinai peninsula, and eventually settled in Egypt. Like many national epics, it is based in historic fact. Like many national epics, the boundaries between fact and fiction, legend, myth and fairytale have blurred. In HEART OF A HERO, internationally renowned word-weaver Chirine El Ansary entices audiences through some of the epic’s most important events.” More here.

One of a Kind: The Cinematic Style of the poetry of Ahmed Matar (Edinburgh, Scotland)

A talk by Dr. Ahmed Khaleel. More here. 

October 20

Nour Festival Opens (London, England)

An annual festival of Arab and Arabic literature and culture. More here.

October 22

Nawal al-Saadawi at the Mosaic Rooms (London, England)

The Mosaic Rooms writes that they’re “pleased to present an evening with celebrated Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi to mark the launch of beautiful new editions of her classic works, published by Zed Books. El Saadawi will be in conversation with Dr Shereen El Feki.” More here.

The Opening of “Voices of Urgency” (Paris, France)

Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail is one of the participants of this international event, which runs through October 25. More here.

October 27

“Allaah, Allaah, Allaah: The Role of Context in Translation” (Cairo, Egypt)

Zeinab Taha speaks as part of the Center for Translation Studies fall lecture series. 6 p.m. Oriental Hall, AUC’s Tahrir Campus.

October 28

The Opening of the 20th Edition of SILA, Algiers’ International Book Fair (Algiers, Algeria)

The book fair will run through November 7. More here.