Roundtable Discussion: Syria’s Cultural Renaissance — Boom or Bust?
February 12 @ 19:00 - 20:00
Free
The creative outburst of the 2011 revolution broke through Syria’s “kingdom of silence” and revealed new art, voices, and writing never before seen or heard. As the country emerges from a 53-year-long dictatorship, can culture heal old wounds? Will creative minds envision the building blocks needed for the new Syria? Some say, the current challenges are insurmountable. Explore possibilities with BBC correspondent and film director Lina Sinjab, filmmaker Yasmin Fedda, and fiction writer Odai Al Zoubi. Moderated by Malu Halasa, TMR’s Literary Editor and co-author of Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (2014).
This roundtable discussion will take place online on Wednesday, February 12th at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET.
This online event is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers:
Odai Al Zoubi is a Syrian short-story writer, essayist, and translator. His short story collections include Nisf ibtisma [A Half Smile] (Mamdouh Adwan Publishing House, 2022); Kitab alhikma wa alsathaja [The Book of Wisdom and Naïveté] (Mamdouh Adwan Publishing House, 2019), Nawafeth [Windows] (Al Mutawassit Publications, 2017), and Al-Samat [Silence] (Al Mutawassit Publications, 2015). He is also the author of collected essays: Qindl om hashim almafqūd [Om Hashim’s Lost Lamp] (Syrian League for Citizenship, 2016). Al Zoubi was awarded a 2023 creative and critical writings grant from AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture) for Empty Heavens, short stories about everyday Syrians in their countries of refuge. His short story “Ten-Armed Gods” was published in The Markaz Review: https://themarkaz.org/ten-armed-gods-a-short-story-by-odai-al-zoubi/
Yasmin Fedda is a Palestinian cultural practitioner, best known as a filmmaker. Her work is multi-award winning and has been widely screened and exhibited across the world at festivals, on TV, and in galleries. Ayouni (2020) is her most recent Syria-focused film about people forcibly disappeared, focusing on Bassel Safadi and Paolo Dall’Oglio. Yasmin is Senior Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary University, London. Yasmin Fedda’s essay, with Dan Gorman, “Three Nights in Free Syria” was published in The Markaz Review: https://themarkaz.org/three-nights-in-free-syria/
Lina Sinjab is an independent filmmaker and a BBC Middle East correspondent based in Beirut. She also contributes to several international media outlets and is a frequent contributor to Syria From Within, a Chatham House policy initiative. Sinjab has covered the Syrian uprising extensively since it began in 2011. She produced and directed the film Madness in Aleppo (2019), about the siege of the city. In 2014 and 2016, Sinjab covered the Syria peace talks in Geneva as the BBC’s world affairs reporter. She directed the film Suryyat (2013), on Syrian women during the uprising. In 2013, Sinjab won the International Media Cutting Edge Award for her coverage of Syria.
Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor. Her latest edited anthologies are Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader with Jordan Elgrably (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023). Previous co-edited anthologies include: Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014); The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design (Chronicle Books, 2008); Kaveh Golestan: Recording the Truth in Iran (Hatje Cantz, 2005); and the short series: Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images, with Rosanne Khalaf (Saqi Books, 2004), and Transit Tehran: Young Iran and Its Inspirations, with Maziar Bahari, (Garnet Press, 2008). She was managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library, in Amsterdam; Editor at Large for Portal 9, in Beirut, and a founding editor of Tank Magazine, in London. She has written for The Guardian, Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her debut novel, Mother of All Pigs (Unnamed Press, 2017), was described as: “a microcosmic portrait of … a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline” by the New York Times. Her writing, edited anthologies, and exhibitions chart a changing Middle East.