#WiTMonth lists are necessarily idiosyncratic, reflecting not only the tastes and knowledge of the list-makers, but also what’s available in translation. In this case, our lists also reflect what’s accessible online.
“I will look at your back / if you come down a little closer.”
The collection is coming mid-October and can be pre-ordered on the MacMillan website.
” In order to express what, in her view, has not been spoken about before in Arabic literature—women’s perspective on sexuality, in its various forms, from lust to sexual trauma—the author saw the need to invent her own language, which impacts readers with its clarity and sobriety.”
“We ran poetry by established and emerging poets — and talked about how women’s poetry in Arabic has changed since the ’90s — published a short story from Iraq, rounded up lists of short stories available online, spoke to writers and scholars, and focused our “Lit & Found” feature on work by women.”
“This is an art that is not meant for the elites, it is meant for the people in the streets. People, I should add, who are perhaps a bit disheartened but still alert, and whose gaze is not fixed on the ground but looks up towards the sky.”
As far as we know, there is not an anthology of work by Syrian women writers, in English translation.
Meanwhile, in an August episode of the new podcast MAQSOUDA, co-hosted by Farah Chamma and Zeina Hashem Beck, the host-poets discuss Mersal’s «فكرة البيوت», or “The Idea of Houses.”
“At the time of writing the novella, I was preoccupied with a question: Is there is free will? Naturally, this question led to others: And how does it fit in a socially controlled life? How can individuals who arrived to London, not by choice, escape the new constraints?”
