Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Making Imru al-Qays Sing and Soar
By AJ Naddaff It’s been quite the hiatus since my last piece — but I’m pleased to return with three great interviews featuring important actors in the Arabic to English […]
Interviews
A Conversation with Hadiya Hussein and Barbara Romaine about ‘Waiting for the Past’
“Wars shrouded every corner of our country with some painful tale, and I built Narjis’ character out of what happened to many.”
A Conversation with Palestine Book Award-winning Poet Mosab Abu Toha
“Wordsworth talks about tranquility, but in Gaza there is no such sense of tranquility. You recollect these things in troubled times, in anxiety.”
Ahmad M. Ahmad on Translating Nathalie Handal into Arabic
“The biggest difference is Nathalie’s poetic techniques are unfamiliar in Arabic. As a translator, I have tried to communicate these techniques faithfully, to preserve the poet’s tone and breath, to preserve the fine, close thread that connects the technique to the essence of the poem.”
Nathalie Handal on Her First Writing Assignment from Mahmoud Darwish, Her New Collection, and the Role of Translation
“Every language carries a world, so a translated work will inevitably experience a transformation. That can be magical. And if you are lucky enough to have a skilled translator, their art will extend the body of your poems.”
Najwan Darwish and Kareem James Abu-Zeid Win 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize
“In its direct, stripped-back lines, the collection demonstrates both the limits and the necessity of language, inviting us to ask, together, how we can move through and beyond suffering.”
A Conversation with Shahd Alshammari: “Reading and Writing Means Learning to Exist in the World with all its Difficulties.”
“You aren’t always going to be incredibly lucky or incredibly devastated. It is not black or white. I wanted there to be a space for randomness.”
IPAF-Shortlisted Author Bushra Khalfan: ‘Novelists are Made of the Same Stuff as Magicians’
“I am somehow a slow writer, which means that it takes so long for the ideas to be processed internally. And as the idea itself is processing, a certain amount of research will be taking place, and that usually takes a few years.”
#WiTMonth Conversations: Karima Ahdad on ‘Cactus Girls’
“But I also gave the male characters, like the father, individual voices, not just to show how their chauvinist mentality harms women, but also to emphasize that men are poor and marginalized too; they have to fight to survive too.”