News

Six titles were on the shortlist for the second annual “Prix de la littérature arabe,” co-sponsored by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute.

Lebanese-American author Rabih Alameddine’s fourth novel, “An Unnecessary Woman,” is on the ten-book longlist for the US’s National Book Award.

It’s now been thirty-two years since the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps. Like other events that bend human capacity to understand our species, they continue to […]

Kuwaiti government censors have prevented Abdullah Al Busais’s new novel “Stray Memories” from entering the country. What effect will the banning have?

Tonight, academic, novelist, and translator Elliott Colla will be joining a panel of poets, activists and scholars speaking about poetical and political freedoms at George Mason University’s Fall for the Book festival. This is part of an ongoing DC-wide contribution to the Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC Project. In advance of his talk, Colla put together some memories of buying books in Cairo over the last 29 years.

Two recent PEN pieces — an event called “Literary Activism: is poetry the strongest form of protest?” and an essay by short-story writer Rasha Abbas, “Art and Culture from the Frontline: […]

Translating an author’s work is one thing. Translating popularity from one language to another is quite another.

On the occasion of New Directions’ publication of the writer Sonallah Ibrahim’s amazing, acclaimed Stealth, Bidoun and ND are bringing together writers and scholars to reflect upon the situation of the Egyptian intellectual in the last year, particularly since President Mohamed Morsi’s removal from power.

The Gingko Conference series — in memory of Mark Linz — is a ten-year project that aims to bring together MENA-focused scholars and public figures around particular topics. The conference series is designed to complement the Gingko Library; it’s the library that’s looking for a three-month intern.