Should Egyptian State Literary Prizes Be Saved?
Professor Tareq Noman has accepted a position as interim secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Culture. This, he says, is because he aims to save LE 7 million in state cultural prizes.
News
Review: Rachid Boudjedra’s Deadpan ‘Obstinate Snail’
The Obstinate Snail By Rachid Boudjedra, trans. Leon Stephens Las Cruces: Xenos Books, 2013 (first in French, 1979) It was a long time that none of the fictions of Rachid Boudjedra, […]
Novelist Bahaa Taher Resigns from State Council of Culture in Protest
Despite rumors to the contrary, Alaa Abdel-Aziz is still Egypt’s culture minister — I believe this is Day 25 — but already a number of top culture workers have either resigned or been fired since the former film professor and Morsi supporter took the helm of official state culture, sparking a growing protest movement.
Basel Zayed on Translating Poetry into Music: ‘I Believe That Words, They Come Up With the Music’
Oud player Basel Zayed has translated two poems by Mahmoud Darwish, five or six by Najwan Darwish, and “a lot of 3ameya” poetry into music. In a Ramallah cafe on PalFest’s last night, he talked about the process.
PalFest Day 6: What is Cultural Boycott?
On Thursday, the author-participants of PalFest 2013 met with Omar Barghouti, one of the founding committee of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), to ask questions about the campaign.
UPDATE: Ghassan Zaqtan’s Visa Issue Resolved
Presumably Canada will come around on the issue of a visa for Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, who along with translator Fady Joudah is on the shortlist for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize. Hopefully, this will be before the prize ceremony next month
PalFest Day 5: Translation of Translation of
More than 200 people were at PalFest’s biggest event yet on Wednesday night in Nablus: The night began with an excerpt of Omar El-Khairy’s Sour Lips. A play, necessarily, is a collaborative translation by the […]
PalFest Day 4: The City and the City
PalFest South finished up its run after a final breakfast. For the writers of PalFest North, Tuesday presented the most intense of psychological shifts.
PalFest Beginnings: Experiments in Translation, Laughter in Gaza
The six-city festival opened in Gaza on Friday (after a group drove up from Cairo) and in Ramallah on Saturday night (after a second group crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan).