Sunday Submissions: Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets
“Submissions can either be written originally in English or translated into it. In the case of translations, a percentage of the prize will be awarded to the translator.”
Poetry
Friday Finds: Excerpt of Raja Alem’s ‘Sarab’
“That was on November 29, 1979. Thanks to the clouds of gas that hovered in the air over the Holy City, the National Guard had successfully regained control of the rooftops and halls of the Grand Mosque, despite the heavy losses they had sustained earlier in the battle.”
Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger on Co-translating Ibn Arabi
According to Moger, the two poet-translators “will be presenting their correspondence-in-translations of poems from Ibn Arabi’s Tarjuman Al Ashwaq, as well as projects of their own, to discuss the process of translation in terms of communion and distance, frustration and aspiration, constraint and freedom, and of voices lost and made.”
The Launch of ‘ArabKidLitNow!’
A new seven-person collective has launched “ArabKidLitNow!,” a project dedicated to the discovery, translation, and promotion of great Arabic children’s literature.
Tawfiq al-Hakim Day: Genius, Humorist, Misogynist, Grouch
“Indeed,” Mahfouz said, “‘Awdat Al-Ruh influenced my fiction writing as much as the works of El-Mazni and Taha Hussein.”
10 By Najwan Darwish; Then You Be the Translator
My night moves
between the tunes of Sabah Fakhri
and the rhythms of Abdel Wahab
Sunday Submissions: Tenure-Track Position in Arab Middle Eastern Studies
“The Department seeks candidates whose research focuses on literature, visual media, and/or other cultural texts.”
On Taking Beirut’s Bookoholics to 80,000 Readers & Beyond
“I tried to start a book club at the university, but it wasnʹt a priority to students or to the university. I then reached out online to readers residing in Lebanon and with steady baby steps, I was able to announce the first book club meeting on July 18, 2012, in a coffee shop in Hamra Street in Beirut.”
For National Poetry Day: 10 from New or Forthcoming Collections
Each time I begin to write about love
the other woman reaches out
and pushes my fingers from the keyboard
the lonely woman who lost everything
the wild woman
who looks like me