Chadian Author Wins 2026 Bait AlGhasham DarArab Prize
Organizers of the Bait AlGhasham DarArab Prize today announced 2026’s winning works in three categories: Authors, Translators, and Omani Publications.
Katherine Van de Vate
Flash Fiction Winner: ‘A Slender Thorn Digs into My Foot’
This tender story won the ArabLit/Komet Kashakeel 2024 Arabic Flash Fiction Prize and is featured in our new collection, Slender Thorns, which you can buy as a print or ebook. You can also hear this story read by professional voice actor Houda Echouafni, in Arabic and English, at our YouTube channel.
‘I Cannot Ignore the Pain in People’s Faces’: Badriyah al-Badri on Writing About Expatriate Workers in Oman
A Conversation with Katherine Van de Vate In 2021, the Omani poet Badriyah Al-Badri made history as the first woman to win Qatar’s prestigious Katara Prize for Poetry, earning the […]
#WiTMonth Conversations: Karima Ahdad on ‘Cactus Girls’
“But I also gave the male characters, like the father, individual voices, not just to show how their chauvinist mentality harms women, but also to emphasize that men are poor and marginalized too; they have to fight to survive too.”
#TranslateThis: Badr Ahmad’s ‘Black Rains’
As Ahmad wrote in his interview with al-Riwayah: “I wanted to write, to scream, to protest, to put my imprint on the forehead of this world. I wanted my sons and daughters to know, a decade or two from now, that their father rejected this war, he rejected all this destruction and exposed the thieves who rode on the wave of the revolution.”
2021 ArabLit Story Prize: Shortlisted Translator Katherine Van de Vate on Great Storytelling
““The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz” was actually written at my request. Karima is primarily a novelist, though she published an award-winning collection of short stories at the age of only 18. I asked Karima if she had any short stories I could translate, and she wrote this one in response to my question. It was based on an event she heard about while she was working as a journalist in Istanbul.”
Judges Choose Inventive, Varied Shortlist for 2021 ArabLit Story Prize
ArabLit is delighted to announce that this year’s judges selected five stories for the shortlist of the 2021 ArabLit Story Prize, by five writers from four countries: Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco.
3 Arabic Translators Longlisted for John Dryden Prize, One ‘Highly Commended’
At the beginning of this week, organizers of the John Dryden Translation Competition announced the winners of their 2021 award.
New Fiction: Excerpt from Badriya al-Badri’s ‘The Last Crossing’
“Lights are running towards me. It’s the first time I’ve seen lights with legs. It’s not a cartoon, these are actual lights, running so fast they are panting; I see their tongues lolling out, drooling as if they are about to leap on someone and shred him with their sharp fangs.”
1 2