CAN YOU EVER GO HOME AGAIN? – A roundtable on TMR’s RETURNING HOME
May 22 @ 19:00 - 20:00
Free
In the 50th issue of The Markaz Review’s RETURNING HOME, writers and artists reflect on whether we can really ever go home again. In “Home is Elsewhere: On the Fictions of Return,” Mai Al-Nakib writes that her childhood home differed from her birthplace; she perceives home as more imaginary than real. In “A Kashmiri in Cashmere,” Nafeesa Syeed hopes she’ll feel at home in a small Washington town east of Seattle, named after her native region, caught between India and Pakistan. And Gabriel Polley interviews British-Bahraini musician-composer Yazz Ahmed in “Arabic Jazz and Yazz Ahmed: A Music Between Homelands,” on how Arabic jazz challenges negative stereotypes amid rising xenophobia in the West. The issue contains 14 stories, looking at Sudanese creatives in Egypt, young Palestinian citizens of Israel, an Iraqi artist who goes home after living in the USA for 40 years, and much more.
Join us on Thursday, May 22nd at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET for a roundtable discussion on our 50th issue, RETURNING HOME, with writers Mai Al-Nakib, Gabriel Polley and Nafeesa Syeed. Moderated by Lina Mounzer.
This online event is free but advance registration is required. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers:
Mai Al-Nakib is author of the novel, An Unlasting Home and the award-winning collection of short stories, The Hidden Light of Objects. As an associate professor, she taught English and comparative literature at Kuwait University for twenty years. She now writes full time in Kuwait.
Gabriel Polley has a PhD in Palestine studies from the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, UK. He previously studied history of art and literature at the University of East Anglia, and Palestine and Arabic studies at Birzeit University, and taught in the occupied West Bank. He currently works in London in the translation and international development sectors. Palestine in the Victorian Age is his first book.
Nafeesa Syeed is a writer and editor who hails from Kashmir. She’s also a lecturer and associate research scholar at Yale.
Lina Mounzer (moderator) is the senior editor of The Markaz Review and a prominent essayist whose creative nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The Baffler and the Paris Review, among other publications.
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