"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."
Searching for the Funambulists: Lisa Marchi on Women Poets of the Arab Diaspora
"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."
New Poetry: Rym Jalil’s ‘My Mother’s Kitchen’
"Every day I lie and say / I know this place. / My mother's kitchen / brims with afflictions / I must pretend to befriend it / we all know it can have only one master / from its beginning to its end"
9 Short Stories by Syrian Women, in Translation
As far as we know, there is not an anthology of work by Syrian women writers, in English translation.
#WiTMonth Podcasts: Poetry and More with Iman Mersal
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."
Haifa Zangana on Translation as Revisiting the Past
"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?"
9 Short Stories by Egyptian Women, in Translation
Although this list does include short stories by Radwa Ashour and Salwa Bakr, it largely focuses on work by women writers who emerged in the '90s, '00s, and '10s.
30 Reads: A Month of Algerian Literature by Women
"Of course, I do enjoy painting for you, right now, a slightly more calamitous situation than the one I actually face – I blame Algerian fiction’s long love affair with tragedies for my theatrics. But the truth is still harsh."
Sahar Khalifeh: ‘I Am A Committed Writer, Or Maybe I Am An Obsessed Writer’
"I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them."