Gretchen Head

Release Party for Winter 2020 ArabLit Quarterly: Dreams

“One of the trickiest, most mysterious secrets of the Arabic language is the root h-l-m.” Continue Reading

Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: ‘World Literature and its Discontents’

“World Literature tends to focus on questions of circulation and reception, and this is inevitably tied to modes of reading. The difference between the way a text is read in English and the way it’s read in Arabic has been at the heart of some of the biggest 20th century literary controversies in the Middle East and North Africa.”Continue Reading

Rewriting National History from a Personal Perspective: Hiyem Cheurfa on Arab Women’s Life Writing
This March, Hiyem Cheurfa’s new book Contemporary Arab Women’s Life Writing and the Politics of Resistance appeared as part of Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature series. In it, Cheurfa takes us on a journey through a number of women’s memoirs, written in the context of twenty-first century uprisings. In this conversation, the author talks about the challenges and the difficulties of writing this book and how the texts she studied changed her life.
Lit & Found: ‘Sudanese Novels Through Time’
Over at Kotobli, they have posted a new list; this time, of Sudanese novels through time. The list was curated by Sudanese-American writer Razan Idris.
Najwa Barakat’s ‘Mister N’ Shortlisted for 2023 EBRD Literature Prize
Today, organizers announced the ten-book shortlist of translated literature for the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize.
Iman Mersal & Robyn Creswell Make 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist with ‘The Threshold’
Organizers of the Griffin Poetry Prize — one of the world’s biggest international poetry prizes — have announced this year’s ten-book longlist. Among them was Egyptian poet Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, beautifully translated by Robyn Creswell.