Novelist Rabih Alameddine in conversation with Dima Alzayat | The Markaz Review

This online event is free to the public. RSVPs are required. REGISTER HERE.

Rabih Alameddine, winner of the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for his latest novel, The Wrong End of the Telescope, will be in conversation with short story author Dima Alzayat (Alligator & Other Stories) for The Markaz Review, on Friday, May 6, 2 pm ET (19:00 UK). Zoom participants will be able to jot down their questions in the chat for Alameddine and Alzayat.

In her TMR review of The Wrong End of the Telescope, Dima Alzayat points out that, “Alameddine plunges headfirst into important questions about empathy and fiction, armed with his signature sharp sarcasm and acerbic humor. ‘Every idiot thinks they’re a writer, they’re not;’ he proclaims in the book’s opening pages. ‘Every dullard thinks they have a tale to tell; they don’t.’ Alameddine is not taking aim at literature he simply dislikes or disagrees with — his is a much more interesting pursuit: What is the point of fiction? What does it do? What can it yield? These queries lie at the heart of his novel, one that takes as its subject the plight of refugees crossing the Mediterranean and those who wait to receive them on the other side.”

Born in Amman, Jordan, Lebanese American writer and painter Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaids; The Hakawati; and the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize.

Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, grew up in San Jose, California and lives in Manchester, in the UK. She studied fiction writing and has won numerous awards. In her TMR review of Alzayat’s Alligator & Other Stories, Malu Halasa suggested that her story collection “starts a different conversation about Arab belonging and assimilation in America, through the prism of Syrian experience. An astute observer of worlds both old and new, Alzayat listened hard to her elders, recognized inconsistencies and digs deep into uncomfortable no-go areas. She is a formidable new voice in understanding the complexities of race and identity.”

This online event is free to the public. RSVPs are required. REGISTER HERE.