afikra presents the Book Club yearly recap, make sure you haven’t missed out on any of the amazing authors and books we featured on the series this year.
****** AUTHORS FEATURED ******
Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese-American poet known for her written and spoken poetry. Elhillo received a BA from the Gallatin School at New York University and an MFA in poetry from The New School. Elhillo has performed all around the world. We talked to Safia about her book “Home is not a country.” The novel is about family, identity, and finding yourself in the most unexpected places.
James Barr talked about his book ‘A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that shaped the Middle East’. A Line in the Sand vividly tells the story of the short but crucial era when Britain and France ruled the Middle East. James is a leading historian of the modern Middle East and author of the widely-acclaimed A Line In The Sand and Lords of the Desert. James read modern history at Oxford. He has worked in politics, at the Daily Telegraph, in the City, at the British Embassy in Paris, and has run his own research business.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid talked about his translations of ‘Exhausted on the Cross” by Najwan Darwish and “Confessions” by Rabee Jaber. Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator, editor, writer, teacher, and scholar who works across multiple languages. As an acclaimed translator of Arabic literature, he works with prominent English-language publishing houses to introduce the writings of Arab poets and novelists to a broad audience, seeking to promote Arabic literature in the US and around the world.
Zeyn Joukhadar talked about his book ‘The Thirty Names of Night: A Novel’. Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of the novels The Map of Salt and Stars, 2018, and The Thirty Names of Night, 2020 and a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI). His work has appeared in KINK: Stories (eds. RO Kwon & Garth Greenwell), Salon, The Paris Review, Shondaland, [PANK], Mizna, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. He is also the guest editor of the 2020 Queer + Trans Voices Issue of Mizna and a Periplus Collective mentor.
Naomi Shihab Nye talked about her books ‘The Turtle of Oman’ and ‘The Turtle of Michigan. The books are about Aref as he travels from Muscat, Oman, to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Naomi Shihab Nye earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of many awards, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, and more. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and was a Witter Bynner Fellow. Nye is the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate.
Raphael Cormack discussed his new book Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring 20’s, it tells the story of Egypt’s interwar nightlife and entertainment industry through the lives of its pioneering women. Introducing an eccentric cast of characters, it brings to life a world of revolutionary ideas and provocative art – one which laid the foundations of Arab popular culture today. It is a story of modern Cairo as we have never heard it before.
****** ABOUT THE SERIES ******
afikra Book Club is an interview series that calls for afikra community members, who are interested in literature and reading, to spend time reading along with the entire community. Books in Arabic and English will be announced on afikra’s reading list and the members will be asked to do the reading at home at their leisure and then join afikra for a conversation with the authors of those books. Every two weeks, a conversation will be held with an author to discuss their work and the book in particular. Individuals joining the call will be expected to have read the book and prepared questions regarding the context, motivation, and background stories. Following the interview there is a moderated town-hall style Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience on Zoom. Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp
Watch all afikra Conversations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
****** ABOUT AFIKRA ******
afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future – through conversations driven by curiosity.
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