A fascinating series of events next week featuring a range of prominent
Arab women writers.

See:
http://poetryfestival.org/spf05_tix.php


> Tuesday May 17th 7:00 P.M.
> All six writers
> World Affairs Council - Event
<http://www.world-affairs.org/calendar.cfm?eventID=483&action=eventDetails>
> Please RSVP in advance with the Council at (206) 441-5910
> Members $25:00
> Non-members $30:00
> Location: University Women
> <http://www.wucofseattle.com/index.cfm?Redirect=JSEnabled> Club Dinner
> 1105 - 6th Ave
> Seattle, WA 98101
>
> May 20th 7:00 P.M.
> Readings and Book Signing
> Elliot Bay Book <http://www.elliottbaybook.com/> Store
> 101 South Main Street * Seattle, Washington 98104 * 206-624-6600 *
> 800-962-5311
> Free - No tickets required
>
> May 21st 7:00 P.M.
> Moderated Discussion
> University of Washington
> Kane Hall
> Reception to Follow 8:30 P.M.
> Free - No tickets required
>
> May 23rd 7:00 P.M.
> Seattle Public Library
> Reading and discussion
> Event
>
<http://www2.spl.org/calendar/default.asp?DoAction=Calendar&MoveTo=5/23/2005
> &View=Event&IDEvent=5144> Details
> Central Location - Downtown Seattle
> Microsoft Auditorium
> Free - No tickets required
>
> May 24th 7:00 P.M.
> Ibtihal Salem and Suheir Hammad
> St. Marks Cathedral
> Reading and discussion
> Free - No tickets required

Books by the visiting authors:

Raja Alem - Hyattombs Hyattombs: A Novel
Raja Alem - Fatma: A Novel of Arabia

Suheir Hammad - Born Palestinian, Born Black
Suheir Hammad - Drops of This Story

Choman Hardi - Runak-i sybarakan: Shir
Choman Hardi - Life for Us

Alia Mamdouh - Mothballs: A Story of Baghdad (Translator - Peter Theroux)
Alia Mamdouh - The Loved Ones (Translator - Peter Clark)
Alia Mamdouh - Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad

Somaya Ramadan - Leaves of Narcissus (Translator - Marilyn Booth)

Ibtihal Salem - Children of the Waters (Translator - Marilyn Booth)

Details on the writers:

WOMEN WRITERS OF THE ARAB WORLD: PARTICIPATING WRITERS

Raja Alem (Saudi Arabia)
Raja Alem is one of the preeminent contemporary authors in Saudi Arabia, and
one of the most popular modern Arabic writers. She is the author of seven
novels, as well as many plays and collections of poetry. In Fatma, her first
book to be published in English, modern life exists side-by-side with
ancient myth and magic. Alem explores contemporary themes of patriarchy and
gender roles in this tale of dashing princes who rise from the sand and
snakes that speak with humans. The results of these juxtapositions transcend
the barriers of culture and language to find common ground beyond the
so-called "clash of civilizations."

Suheir Hammad (Palestine/US)
Born in a Palestinian refugee camp, Suheir Hammad moved to Brooklyn when she
was a child. She has explored the tensions of her 21st century amalgam of
identities in biography, poetry, and theatre, and is perhaps best known for
her renderings of her own hip-hop poetry in the Tony award-winning Def
Poetry Jam. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals, including
The Amsterdam News, Essence, STRESS Hip-Hop Magazine, and the Middle East
Report, and in anthologies including New to North America, Listen Up!, The
Space Between Our Footsteps, and 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About
Women's History. Her books Born Palestinian, Born Black and Drops of This
Story have received critical acclaim.

Choman Hardi (Kurdistan/Iraq/UK)
Choman Hardi was born in Kurdistan/Iraq, and has lived in Iraq, Iran, and
Turkey, before coming to England in 1988. She has published three
collections of poetry in Kurdish, Return with No Memory, Light of the
Shadows, and Selected Poems. The recently published Life for Us is her first
English collection. She has served as the chair of Exiled Writers'
Ink!, an organization of refugee writers, and currently facilitates a poetry
course for Kurdish people in English at the School of Oriental and African
Studies. Hardi recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Kent on the
ways in which migration influences the lives of Kurdish women.

Alia Mamdouh (Iraq/France)
Iraqi born writer, journalist, and editor Alia Mamdouh has just received the
2004 AUC Naguib Mahfouz Literary Award for her novel al-Mahbubat (The Loved
Ones). A close observer of Arab literary life and East-West relations,
Mamdouh is also a journalist who has lived and worked in several Arab and
Western capitals. After working as the editor-in-chief for Al-Rashid
magazine, and editor of Al-Fikr Al-Muasir magazine, she left her homeland in
1982 living first in Beirut, then Palestine, London and, finally, Paris. Her
previous publications include two collections of short stories and four
novels. Her only novel available in English is Mothballs.

Somaya Ramadan (Egypt)
Egyptian writer, translator and literary critic Somaya Ramadan is the
recipient of the 2001 AUC Nagib Mahfouz Literary Award for her first novel
The Narcissus Leaves. One of the judges observed of her writing that "marked
by a hallucinating and captivating narration, this is liminal writing par
excellence." This novel was preceeded by two successful collections of short
stories, Khashab wa Nohass (Brass and
Wood) in 1995 and Manazel el-Kamar (Phases of the Moon) in 1999. Ramadan
received her B.A. from the English Department, Faculty of Arts, Cairo
University, and her Ph.D. from Trinity College, Dublin. She is currently a
lecturer in English and translation at the National Academy of Arts.

Ibtihal Salem (Egypt)
Ibtihal Salem's novels provides an excellent forum for studying both
everyday life in Egypt and current literary experimentation in the Middle
East. Salem's writing of the last thirty years is lauded for its social
messages, with its poignant, poetic look at the economic inequalities that
result from neo-colonialism. Finding the expression of sexuality necessary
to explicate problems of Egyptian identity, Salem often links poverty to
gender marginality. Her heroines, however, celebrate the heritages that have
shaped them, even as they resist certain aspects of those heritages. Her
collection, Children of the Waters, is available in English translation.