TMR Book Club Discusses “Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader” with the editors and special guests
2025-03-30 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Paris) | Online
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Join us to discuss Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader online with special guest speakers Zeina Azzam and Saleem Haddad on Sunday, March 30th at 1 pm Eastern/19:00 CET. Moderated by co-editors Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably.
When governments around the world enable the genocide of a people and the dilapidation of a sacred homeland, the Palestinian people stand fast and resist. The fifty-eight contributions in this collection remind readers that just as love perseveres, so do the Palestinians, and their struggles and triumphs.
Sumūd stands for a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians’ aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of culture’s power and importance during occupation and war. This anthology spans the 20th and 21st centuries of Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 2021–2024. It also includes twenty-five black-and-white illustrations by Palestinian artists. Published by Seven Stories Press, 2025.
This event is online and free to the public. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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About the speakers:
Malu Halasa is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, and co-editor of Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Her latest edited anthology is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023).
Jordan Elgrably is a Franco-American and Moroccan writer and translator, whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and The Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review. His latest edited anthology is Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024).
Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Her books include the collection of poems Some Things Never Leave You (Tiger Bark Press, 2023) and the chapbook Bayna Bayna, In-Between (The Poetry Box, 2021). She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022–2025.
Saleem Haddad is a novelist and writer. His critically acclaimed novel, Guapa (Europa Editions, 2016) was awarded both a Stonewall Honour and the 2017 Polari First Book Prize. He also writes nonfiction and short stories, and his story for the Palestinian sci-fi anthology Palestine +100 (Comma Press, 2019) was selected as one of the best sci-fi stories of 2019. His directorial debut, Marco, premiered in 2019 and was nominated for the 2019 Iris Prize for Best British Short Film. He is currently based in Lisbon, with roots in London, Amman, Beirut, and Palestine.

TMR Book Club Discusses Youssef Rakha's "The Dissenters"
2025-04-27 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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This month, the TMR Book Club will be discussing Youssef Rakha’s debut novel, The Dissenters. We will meet online on Sunday, April 27th at 1pm EST/6pm UK/7pm CET.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Hallucinatory, erotic, and stylish, The Dissenters is a transcendent portrait of a woman and an era that explodes our ideas of faith, gender roles, freedom, and political agency.
Amna, Nimo, Mouna—these are all names for a single Egyptian woman whose life has mirrored that of her country. After her death in 2015, her son, Nour, ascends to the attic of their house where he glimpses her in a series of ever more immersive visions: Amna as a young woman forced into an arranged marriage in the 1950s, a coquettish student of French known to her confidants as Nimo, a self-made divorcee and a lover, a “pious mama” donning her hijab, and, finally, a feminist activist during the Arab Spring. Charged and renewed by these visions of a woman he has always known as Mouna, Nour begins a series of fevered letters to his sister—who has been estranged from Mouna and from Egypt for many years—in an attempt to reconcile what both siblings know about this mercurial woman, their country, and the possibility for true revolution after so much has failed.
Published by Graywolf Press, 2025.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian novelist, poet and critic working in both Arabic and English. His short story collection, Emissaries, is out from Barakunan. His first novel The Dissenters, is his first novel. He lives with his family in Cairo.

This online event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Learn about how you can support The Markaz Review.
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Jordan Elgrably à la Comédie du Livre
2025-05-16 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Comédie du Livre, Promenade du Peyrou, Montpellier, 34000, France
Venez rencontrer le rédacteur en chef de The Markaz Review et découvrir ses derniers ouvrages imprimés, « Stories from the Center of the World : New Middle East Fiction » et « Sumūd : A New Palestinian Reader » dans le cadre de la Comédie du Livre. Il présentera ses romans en anglais. Promenade de Peyrou.
QUAND:

le 16 mai entre 16h00 et 18h00
le 17 mai entre 11h00 et 12h00

OÙ: au stand Grain des Mots, Promenade de Peyrou.
On a hâte de vous y retrouver !
En savoir plus sur la Comédie du Livre : https://www.10joursenmai.fr/
À propos de l’auteur :
Jordan Elgrably est un écrivain et traducteur américain, français et marocain dont les récits et la non-fiction créative ont été publiés dans de nombreuses anthologies et revues, notamment Apulée, Salmagundi et la Paris Review. Rédacteur en chef et fondateur de The Markaz Review, il est cofondateur et ancien directeur du Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz à Los Angeles (2001-2020). Il est l’éditeur de Stories From the Center of the World : New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024), et co-éditeur avec Malu Halasa de Sumūd : a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories, 2025). Basé à Montpellier, en France, et en Californie, il écrit sur Twitter @JordanElgrably.
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Jordan Elgrably at the Comédie du Livre
Come and meet the editor of The Markaz Review and discover his latest books in print, “Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction” and “Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader” as part of the Comédie du Livre. He will be presenting his novels in English.
WHEN:

May 16 between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm
May 17 between 11:00am and 12:00pm

WHERE: at the Grain des Mots stand
We look forward to seeing you there!
Learn more about the Comédie du Livre: https://www.10joursenmai.fr/
About the author:
Jordan Elgrably is an American, French and Moroccan writer and translator whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and the Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001–2020). He is the editor of Stories From the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024), and co-editor with Malu Halasa of Sumūd: a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories, 2025). Based in Montpellier, France and California, he tweets @JordanElgrably.

CAN YOU EVER GO HOME AGAIN? – A roundtable on TMR's RETURNING HOME
2025-05-22 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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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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TMR Exhibition: Art of the Palestinian Poster at P21 Gallery — Shubbak Festival
2025-05-23 - 2025-06-14 | P21 Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London, NW1 1JD, United Kingdom
An evocative exhibition showcases the resurgence of Palestinian political posters as powerful works of art and vital campaigning tools during the war on Gaza for Shubbak 2025. Curated by TMR’s literary editor Malu Halasa, the collection includes anti-war works by the original members of New Vision collective — artists fundamental to the creation of Palestinian modern art Vera Tamari, Sliman Mansour, Tayseer Barakat, and Nabil Anani — alongside contemporary posters by Gazan artist Hazem Harb, popular Lebanese musician Khaled El Haber, and Palestinian new generation poster-maker Haneen Nazzal, among many others.
ASAD AZI (Palestinian, B. 1955), "EKHTILAL," 2023, Acrylic on paper, 75 x 55 cm BASHAR KHALAF
(Palestinian, B. 1991)

GOD, MAKE THIS HOUSE SAFE (2023)
Collage on paper
75 x 55 cm
DYALA MOSHTAHA
(Palestinian, B. 1997)

FREEDOM IN BLOOM (2023)
FineArt archival paper, 310 gsm
75 x 55 cm | Edition of 10 (+AP)
HASSAN MANASRAH
(Palestinian, B. 1980)

PALESTINIAN WOMAN (2023)
FineArt archival paper, 310 gsm
75 x 55 cm | Edition of 10 (+AP)
HAZEM HARB
(Palestinian, B. 1980)

THEY ARE NOW STEALING YOUR SKIN (2024) Charcoal on paper
75 x 55 cm
HOSNI RADWAN
(Palestinian, B. 1955)

ALL RIGHTS NOT RESERVED - GAZA (2023) FineArt archival paper, 310 gsm
75 x 55 cm | Edition of 10 (+AP)
KHALED EL HABER
(Labanese, B. 1956)

WE ARE DOING FINE IN GAZA... WHAT ABOUT YOU?! (2024) FineArt archival paper, 310 gsm
75 x 55 cm | Edition of 10 (+AP)
MOHAMMED JOHA
(Palestinian, B. 1978)

SLEEPLESS (2024)
Acrylic on paper
75 x 55 cm
NABIL ANANI
(Palestinian, B. 1943)

STOP THE GENOCIDE (2023)
Mixed media on paper
75 x 55 cm
SLIMAN MANSOUR
(Palestinian, B. 1947)

DISTORTION (2023)
FineArt archival paper, 310 gsm
75 x 55 cm | Edition of 5 (+AP)
TAYSEER BARAKAT
(Palestinian, B. 1959)

UNTITLED (2023)
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
75 x 55 cm

This collection of artful posters, originally from the Zawyeh Gallery of Ramallah and Dubai and never before exhibited in the UK, appear with posters for Palestine hacked into London bus shelters by the anonymous activist group Protest Stencil; the stark infographic posters by the decolonizing collective Visualizing Palestine; and posters that pro-Palestinian protestors downloaded from the internet, printed, and carried on demonstrations. An opening night event will take place on May 23 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, £5 admission (more information here).
A poster roundtable discussion will also take place on June 11 at P21 Gallery (6:30-8:30 pm), with Palestinian artist Vera Tamari, Visualizing Palestine’s Aline Batarseh, West Bank curator Nadine Aranki, and Professor Dina Matar from SOAS Centre of Palestinian Studies, will discuss art in Palestinian resistance and the political and aesthetic impact of Palestinian political posters.
Learn more about this exhibition
The Art of the Palestinian Poster exhibition is part of the London-wide Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture festival. Shubbak Festival (meaning ‘window’ in Arabic) is Europe’s largest biennial celebration of contemporary Arab and SWANA (South West Asian & North African) arts and culture. Taking place from 23 May to 15 June 2025, the festival will showcase bold, innovative, and culturally authentic works across visual arts, film, music, theatre, dance, literature, and debates—connecting audiences in London, across the UK, and beyond.

TMR Book Club Discusses Zahran Alqasmi's "Honey Hunger" with translator Marilyn Booth
2025-05-25 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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This month, join us online for a special discussion on Zahran Alqasmi’s “Honey Hunger” with translator Marilyn Booth. We meet online on Sunday, May 25th at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET. Moderated by TMR’s Managing Editor Rana Asfour.
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About the book:
A novel of longing, uncertainty, and ultimately of hope, written by an International Prize for Arabic Fiction-winning author and an International Booker-prize winning translator.
Azzan is a beekeeper in a rural community in Oman. Devoted to tending his bees and searching for wild hives, he encounters Thamna, a lone shepherd woman, on a mountain slope and is captivated by her and her honey-colored eyes.
Zahran Alqasmi’s masterful novel thrums forward with a subtle momentum. His lucid, poetic writing conveys a visceral sense of time and place, of the fragile ecologies inhabited by both bees and humans alike, in this intense and compelling novel of loss and hope.
Published by Hoopoe, 2025.

About the author & translator:
Zahran Alqasmi (Author) is an Omani poet and novelist, born in the Sultanate of Oman in 1974. Honey Hunger was his third of four published novels, and in 2023 he won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) for The Water Diviner. He has also published ten poetry collections and a collection of short stories.
Marilyn Booth (Translated by) is professor emerita, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Magdalen College, Oxford University. She has translated many works of Arabic fiction into English. Her translations of Omani author Jokha Alharthi include Bitter Orange Tree and Celestial Bodies, which was awarded the International Booker Prize. She has also translated Hoda Barakat, Hassan Daoud, Elias Khoury, Latifa al-Zayyat, and Nawal al-Saadawi. Her research publications focus on Arabophone women’s writing and the ideology of gender debates in the nineteenth century, most recently The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt.
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This online event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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The Markaz Review Workshop: Writing From the Center of the World
2025-05-31 10:30 - 17:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Arab British Centre, 1 Gough Square, London, EC4A 3DE, United Kingdom
Whether you’re a seasoned or emerging writer, join TMR’s daylong writing workshop that aims to inspire and empower writers to engage with the Middle East and the wider world through the lens of creative expression. During this event, you will also get a chance to meet TMR’s editorial team, including editor-in-chief Jordan Elgrably, managing editor Rana Asfour, and literary editor Malu Halasa. Learn about TMR’s mission to provide critical and creative perspectives on SWANA arts, and discover how TMR has become a platform for the voices of Gaza, queer fiction from the region, and literary work that challenges and reshapes perceptions of and in the region.
Event highlights include an introduction to The Markaz Review (10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.), a workshop on critical writing and reviewing (12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.), a workshop on fiction and literary nonfiction (3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.), and a workshop on translation and publishing (4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.). Although the event is free, booking is essential.
Learn more about this event

TMR Book Club Discusses Bothayna Al-Essa's "The Book Censor's Library," translated by Sawad Hussain & Ranya Abdelrahman
2025-06-29 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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Join The Markaz Review’s Book Club on Sunday, June 29th at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET to dive into Bothayna Al-Essa’s “The Book Censor’s Library,” translated by Sawad Hussain & Ranya Abdelrahman. Hosted by TMR’s Managing Editor, Rana Asfour.

About the book:
A national book award finalist, the novel is a reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees. Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Guardian of Surfaces is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.
The new book censor has not slept soundly in weeks. By day, he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish-allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night, pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter, and the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture.
About the author & the translators:
Bothayna Al-Essa (author) is the bestselling Kuwaiti author of nearly a dozen novels and additional children’s books. She is also the founder of Takween, a bookshop and publisher of critically acclaimed works. Her most recent book, The Book Censor’s Library, won the Sharjah Award for Creativity in the novel category in 2021 and is her third novel to appear in English, after Lost in Mecca and All That I Want to Forget. Al-Essa was author-in-residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation for the summer of 2023, and the recipient of Kuwait’s Nation Encouragement Award for her fiction in 2003 and 2012. She has written books on writing and led writing workshops throughout the Arab world.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work in 2023 was shortlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and longlisted for The Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation (2024 cycle). Her most recent translations include Edo’s Souls by Stella Gaitano (Dedalus Books), Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani (Neem Tree Press).
Ranya Abdelrahman is a translator of Arabic literature into English. After working for more than 16 years in the information technology industry, she changed careers to pursue her interest in books, promoting reading and translation. Abdelrahman has published translations in ArabLit Quarterly, The Markaz Review, and The Common, and is the translator of Out of Time, a short story collection by Palestinian author Samira Azzam.

This online event is open and free to the public. Registration is required. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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TMR Book Club Discusses The Burning Heart of the World with author Nancy Kricorian
2025-07-27 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
On Sunday, July 27th TMR’s Book Club will meet to discuss The Burning Heart of the World with author Nancy Kricorian at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET. Hosted by TMR Managing Editor Rana Asfour.
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In vivid, poetic prose, Nancy Kricorian’s The Burning Heart of the World tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War. Returning to the fabular tone of Zabelle, her popular first novel, Kricorian conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile. Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale, The Burning Heart of the World is a sweeping saga that takes readers on an epic journey from the mountains of Cilicia to contemporary New York City.
About the author:
Nancy Kricorian is the author of the novels Zabelle, Dreams of Bread and Fire, and All The Light There Was, focused on post-genocide Armenian diaspora life. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as with Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Award. She lives in New York City.
Published by Red Hen Press, 2025.

This online event is open and free to the public. Registration is required. Donations are welcome to support The Markaz Review.
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TMR Book Club Discusses Omar Khalifah's "Sand-Catcher" with special guests
2025-09-28 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
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Join us on Sunday, September 28th at 1pm EST/ 6pm UK/ 7pm CET to discuss Omar Khalifah’s Sand-Catcher with special guests!
About the book:
A sardonic, thrilling fable about collective memory and the many ways it can be saved or subverted. Omar Khalifa’s debut novel Sand-Catcher is at once a polyphonic satire and a tightly plotted tale of suspense. Walking the line between gallows humor, rage, and depthless heartbreak, it is a unique reflection of contemporary Palestinian identity in all its facets.
Four young, Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked, on account of their heritage, with profiling one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be all too happy to go on record, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed. This living witness to history, this secular saint, has no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to serve as an inspiration for the youth of tomorrow. What he wants is to be left alone.
As threats from the team’s editor-in-chief put more and more pressure on the journalists, they must decide just how far they’re willing to go to get the old man on the record. After all, what possible weight can one stubborn demand for privacy have when balanced against the imperative to bear witness?
Published by Coffee House Press, 2024.
About the author & translator:
Omar Khalifah (author) is a novelist and short story writer in Arabic. His book, Nasser in the Egyptian Imaginary, was published in English by Edinburgh University Press in 2017. His collection Ka’annani Ana (As If I Were Myself) was published in Amman, Jordan in 2010, and his novel Qabid al-Raml (Sand-Catcher) was published in 2020. His articles have appeared in Middle East Critique and Journal of World Literature. A Fulbright scholar, Khalifah is assistant professor of Arabic Literature and Culture at Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar.
Barbara Romaine is an academic and literary translator. She has published translations of five novels, most recently Waiting for the Past (Syracuse University Press, 2022), by the Iraqi novelist Hadiya Hussein. She has held two NEA fellowships in translation, one of which was for her work on Radwa Ashour's Spectres (Interlink Books, 2011). Spectres went on to place second in the 2011 Saif Ghobash-Banipal international translation competition. Romaine’s translations of essays, short stories, and classical poetry have appeared in a variety of literary periodicals.
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