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TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN Roundtable Discussion
March 21 @ 19:00 - 20:00
Free
The Markaz Review presents a conversation around TMR 39’s theme, BURN IT ALL DOWN, in which senior editor Lina Mounzer talks to three of the issue’s contributors on their essays.
In her editorial, “Why Burn It All Down?”, Mounzer quoted the poetry of John Donne and suggested that the Gaza genocide represents “a collective diminishment” of us all — westerners and easterners alike, while in her essay “The Time of Monsters,” Layla AlAmmar took inspiration from several Arab poets, including Khalil Gibran, as well as writers Walter Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci, and argued that Hamas was trying “to stop the Nakba.” In “Al-Thakla—Arabic as the Original Mourner,” Abdelrahman ElGendy struggles with wishing to express himself in Arabic while admitting that English holds more currency; he argues that “English does not give me a seat at the table [but] offers me the chance to point at the table.” ElGendy asks: “How do you hold your grief in a language that’s been its main perpetrator?” And Michelle Eid in her essay “Israel’s Environmental and Economic War on Lebanon” suggests that Israel isn’t only at war with the Palestinians, but perhaps the entire region. What needs to be dismantled or destroyed before a new world can be ushered in? This conversation gives the microphone to a younger Arab generation who, though perfectly fluent in English, takes issue with western hegemonic discourse.
This roundtable discussion will take place online on March 21st at 2pm EST/ 7pm CET/ 6pm UK. This event is open and free to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers:
LINA MOUNZER is a Lebanese writer and translator. She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times and her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Freeman’s, Washington Post, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Tales of Two Planets (Penguin 2020), and Best American Essays 2022 (Harper Collins 2022). She is a senior editor at The Markaz Review.
Read her editorial in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Why “Burn it All Down”?
LAYLA ALAMMAR is a writer and academic from Kuwait. She earned a PhD in Arab women’s fiction and literary trauma theory, and she has an MSc in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Pact We Made (2019), was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel, Silence is a Sense (2021), was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She has written for The Guardian, LitHub, the Times Literary Supplement, ArabLit Quarterly, The New Arab, GQ Middle East, and NewLines Magazine.
Read her essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: The Time of Monsters
ABDELRAHMAN ELGENDY is a Dietrich fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Nonfiction Writing MFA, and a Heinz fellow at Pitt’s Global Studies Center. His work has received awards or fellowships from Logan Nonfiction Program, Tin House Workshop, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He was a finalist for the 2021 and 2023 Margolis Award for Social Justice Journalism.
Read his centerpiece essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Al-Thakla—Arabic as the Original Mourner
MICHELLE EID is a researcher, consultant, and editor. Her areas of interest are socio-economic rights and development, focusing on agriculture and food sovereignty in the Levant. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Al Rawiya, a magazine focused on the Levant region.
Read her essay in our March issue, TMR 39 • BURN IT ALL DOWN: Israel’s Environmental and Economic Warfare on Lebanon