"And I’m still surprised by the highly specific classification of my identity / On my ID card, where they wrote: / Male, Muslim, single."
Sunday Submissions: The 2020-21 BCLA/BCLT John Dryden Translation Competition
The first prize is £350, second prize is £200, third prize is £100, and other entries may receive commendations.
Bulaq 55: ‘Ten Out of Ten’
Following a month-long break, BULAQ co-hosts M Lynx Qualey and Ursula Lindsey put together a list of 10 books they plan to discuss this fall.
‘Readings for the City of Shattered Glass’: Support Lebanese Theater
"We are in such a critical situation that we are inverting the role of theater: instead of having that art form as a tool to reflect on society, to convey social order, to incite rebellion or revolution, and most of all justice in times of crisis, what we are striving for at the moment is to gather the dismantled pieces of a very vivid theatrical scene in Lebanon. It is our particular role now to keep theater and theatermakers alive and dignified."
Disappearing Professions, Memoirs, and Myths: Mophradat’s 2020 Writing Sabbatical Grants
The six recipients were selected from among nearly 100 applications that came from across the region. Decisions were made with the assistance of a jury that included authors Ahmed Naje, Hussam Hilali, and Samar Yazbek, and playwright and researcher Meriam Bousselmi.
Arabic Events at American Literary Translators Association’s 2020 (Virtual) Conference
The complete 2020 schedule is now online. For this year's virtual event, there will be five types of events. These are: sessions, readings, workshops, special events, and -- for the first time this year -- caucuses.
Virtual ‘Arabic Book Cover Archive’ Showcases Range of Styles
Starting with the first post in February of this year, a team of volunteers from across the region started scanning and posting images to Instagram as a start at an archive tracing the shifts and movements in Arabic cover design.
11 Healing Reads: Books for Dark Days
"But there are also books that find the holes and -- at least sometimes, for some readers -- patch us up."
New in Translation: ‘Song of Myself’ by Ghareeb Iskander
"There are silent voices inside me. / I will free them now / I will free also / The letters of love words / Suffocated in my mouth."
Sunday Submissions: ‘The Common’ Seeks Stories from the Arabian Gulf
The Common's summer and fall submissions call -- open through the end of November -- asks for stories, poems, and nonfiction set in, around, and through the Gulf.
Online Now: 17 New Arabic Stories from Emerging Authors
"The stories center creation, missed opportunities, romance and memory, stuck-ness and entrapment, language and identity, patriarchies and colonialisms."
Friday Finds: The Dialects of Oil & Rain
At the end of last month, three writers -- Mona Kareem, Deepak Unnikrishnan, and Krupa Ge -- talked about translation, transience, the Gulf, belonging, and more.
