In this episode of BULAQ, co-hosts Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey speak to Ahmed Gobba and Avery Gonzales, co-translators of Efflatoun’s 1993 memoir, The Memoir of Inji Efflatoun: From Childhood to Prison.
This October will see the release of Lebanese writer Souhaib Ayoub’s second novel, Le Loup de la famille (The Wolf of the Family), in Stéphanie Dujols’ translation. Originally published as Zi’b al-‘a’ila in 2024 by Hachette Antoine/Naufal, the French publication is an event for several reasons, not least because an exciting new voice has arrived in French.
Nineteen-year-old Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza, is an English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through her writing, she seeks to amplify Gaza’s voice and illuminate stories that are too often left untold. Here, she talks with ArabLit about her education, her writing, and the importance of poetry and speculative fiction.
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Margaret Litvin discuss the triangulation of translating Arabic literature and Soviet Russia into English, vanishing intertexts, and why translating Sonallah Ibrahim’s Ice into a single language would have been like “putting salad through a blender.”
Next year, Henar Press will bring out its first two titles, translated from Kurdish to English. But already, their website — with its Kurdish Literary Database — is contributing to a wider discussion around and sharing of Kurdish literature. In this brief online chat, publisher and editor-in-chief Aryan Omar Hassan talks about why he wanted to start Henar Press, why they’re looking for experimental literature, and what they’d like to see in their submissions inbox.
In January 2022, Moroccan-Dutch poet and translator Nisrine Mbarki Ben-Ayad published her debut collection of poetry, Oeverloos (Shoreless or Boundless), for which she was nominated for the C. Buddingh’ Prize for the best Dutch-language poetry debut of the year and the Herman de Coninck Prize for the best Dutch-language poetry collection of the year. Here, she talks to Rahael Mathews about translation, multilinguality, and not being bounded to “one place, one language, one life, one role, and one form.”
The great Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim passed away earlier this month. BULAQ discussed his novel Warda – the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her.
When does motherhood become a muse? For generations, parenting has been humanity’s ultimate act of creation – and yet mothers are sidecasted, primarily portrayed as the bearers of stories rather than the creative mind behind the storytelling. This August, for Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), we interviewed two women writers whose journey and experience of motherhood have influenced their craft.
Tawahan, a new online magazine for arts and philosophy, was launched earlier this year with the mission “to give up-and-coming, Arab voices a platform to share their thoughts and artistic achievements, whether in Arabic or in English.” Here, the platform’s founders, Sanad Tabaa and Majeed Malhas, speak about their motivations and hopes in founding this new initiative, and share how you can get involved.
