Publication Day for ArabLit Quarterly’s Spring 2021 Issue: SONG

The Spring 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly — with voices moist and cricketlike, stirring and gritty, ploverlike and tremulous — is available today in print and e-form:

PRINT editions are available via Amazon (US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere), while e-copies are available as PDF or EPUB via Gumroad. You can also subscribe on Exact Editions (as an individual or institution) and become a subscriber and supporter on Patreon.

This issue, which was guest-edited by Karim Zidan, brings together essays and art about music from the 9th century through the 21st. It features songbooks, short stories, poetry, essays, reflections, a dictionary feature, photographs, a playlist, a recipe, and a graphic novel by Zahra Marwan that goes on a song-filled journey between New Mexico, Mecca, and Kuwait.

As always, the work ranges over eras, and includes 10th-century poetry by the polymath Kushajim, in translation by Salma Harland; a look at music and the Divine from Esme L.K. Partridge; a journey through Palestinian resistance folk music with Shaimaa Abulebda; a brief look at the social lives of songbooks from with Nicholas Mangialardi; and contemporary short stories and poetry by authors from Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq.

You can find more snapshots from the magazine on our Instagram.

We’re also experimenting, this issue, with offering prints, shirts, pillows, and more of a few pieces of art from the issue, including the image of Umm Kulthum from our table of contents, below.

As always, anyone who cannot afford the magazine but wants the e-issue can contact us at info@arablit.org; no explanation is necessary.