Events

Gazan Writers Salon

Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online

April 24, 2012
7:00 - 9:00 p.m., reception to follow
 Knox Hall Room 509, Columbia University 606 West 122 Street, New York, NY 10027

ArteEast presents Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online, a public program at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, in which Palestinian writers will discuss how their work has been shaped and affected by the internet. In this discussion Somaya al Sousi and Fatena al Ghorra contextualize their work within the broader landscape of Palestinian literature online, while Adania Shibli (co-editor Narrating Gaza) explores the way in which such platforms foster literary community and discourse. 

The discussion will be moderated by Khalid Hadeed (Cornell University) and featuring academic discussant Helga Tawil Souri (NYU).

Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online is presented in collaboration with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. It is the first part of a series of literary readings and discussions, “Gazan Writers Salon” in conjunction with the publication of For Lives Undone: Gaza Summons Its Writers to Speak (Min Hutam al-Hayah: Ghazzah Tastantiq Kuttabaha), the Spring 2012 issue of Shahadat, our popular online literary publication. 

In his ode to Gaza, Mahmoud Darwish links Gazan literary production with its unique history within Palestine as a land that has been repeatedly occupied by external forces and subjected to over two decades of sanctions, blockade and strikes: “We are unfair to her when we search for her poems. Let us not disfigure the beauty of Gaza. The most beautiful thing in her is that she is free of poetry at a time when the rest of us tried to gain victory with poems...”

Palestine has long been a center of literary and cultural production in the Arab world, with individual voices like Mahmoud Darwish’s setting a path for the rich contemporary scene exemplified by the Palestine Festival of Literature which is being held in Gaza in May in its fifth edition. ArteEast’s “Gazan Writers Salon” Spring 2012 public programs mark the robust cultural production that has emerged from this city’s traumatic history and allows audiences to discover observations and documentation of Gaza and Palestine today.

This program has been made possible with generous support from the A.M. Qattan Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.