This is part of a special section on self-translation. By Dunya Mikhail Writing a poem is exploring a new world, and the first feeling that usually accompanies it is doubt. […]
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Special Section: On Self-translation
In this special section on self-translation, authors and author-translators Mona Kareem, Khalid Lyamlahy, Deena Mohamed, Dunya Mikhail, and Ali Shakir reflect on what it means to transport their own writing from one of their languages to another.
Read more‘BILA HUDOOD: Arabic Literature Everywhere’ Announces Schedule of Events
‘BILA HUDOOD: Arabic Literature Everywhere,’ an inaugural online literary festival funded by the Royal Society of Literature, is pleased to announce out full schedule of events, set for July 9-11.
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IPAF Judging Chair Announces 2021 Shortlist ‘Rivaling the Best Books of the Prize’
In the video, judging chair Chawki Bazih said that although there the novels submitted to the prize were fewer in number than in previous years, they were of a high quality, “rivaling the best books of the prize since its inception.”
Read more‘The Bird Tattoo’: Between Horror and Peace in the Sinjar Mountains
“In the quiet, slow-growing love between Elias and Helen, the reader experiences the polar opposite of the slave market and the horrors in Ayash’s house.”
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#WiTMonth Conversations: Poet Dunya Mikhail on Her Debut Novel, ‘The Bird Tattoo’
“I was not sure about how good or bad of an idea it was to publish my book (the Arabic original at least) during this pandemic time, but I thought: What about the babies who will be delivered now? I know timing a book is easier than timing a life, but we can never guarantee what happens later; there’s always risk no matter what we do.”
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Dunya Mikhail: ‘Writing It Twice Is My New Original’
“In the beginning, it was an annoying experience, because the poems pulled me right and left (as Arabic and English are written in opposite directions, you know), but when I let them work freely with each other (like a democrat), they actually benefited from each other.”
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Dunya Mikhail’s ‘The Beekeeper’ Longlisted for National Book Award
The finalists will be announced October 10, with the winners announced November 14, at a National Book Awards ceremony.
Read moreIraqi Literature in Translation: A Brief Introduction
Yet Iraqi literature continues, somehow, to blossom. There are older writers Fadhil al-Azzawi and Muhammad Khudayyir still at work (although the former in exile), and much younger ones, too: Thirtysomething Iraqi Hassan Blassim has been called “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive.”
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