Mizna Online

Marking Three Years of Genocide in Gaza: Hug Machine

October 7, 2026
by Eman Basher

In my first writing session with Dr. Refaat, I sat there, staring at the blank page. I wrote nothing.

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In Commemoration of Mizna's Twentieth Twin Cities Arab Film Fest

September 25, 2026
by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Cinema cannot repair history. But it can give forms, incarnate, unsettle the ways history has been written. It can reveal, make visible what has been erased while leaving room for what remains invisible.

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Litterateur as Saboteur: Review of HUNA by Abdelrahman ElGendy

September 18, 2026
by Nour Eldin Hussein

Hereness is in smiling for the mugshot camera. Hereness is inside the prison itself, turning the null space into a source of meaning unto itself. Hereness is pure being; it is what remains when the Arms have seized everything else.

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Two Poems from Nima Hasan

August 20, 2026
by Nima Hasan

I gather a bouquet of flowers
to cradle this grief,
or give it color, at least.

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A Diasporic Requiem: Watching Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s...

August 14, 2026
by Sima Shakhsari

In the summer of 1989, my mother and I drove to participate in Ayatollah Khomeini’s public funeral. His body was displayed in a refrigerated glass case sitting atop an elevated platform in what was then a vast empty lot, which later became the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque. The heat of that summer day was intense, and the sheer size of the crowd was astonishing.

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30 More SWANA Books to Read in 2026

August 4, 2026
by Samia Saliba

2026 continues to be an exciting year for SWANA literature, with many stunning debuts, new releases and translations from longtime favorites, and experiments in new genres.

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Disability Folio

July 31, 2026
by Mizna Staff

As we close yet another Disability Pride Month amidst ever-escalating warfare and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian, Sudanese, Iranian, Lebanese, and many more peoples across the SWANA region and Global South, it is of dire importance to reflect on the systems that debilitize, incapacitate, maim, and otherwise catastrophize both our bodies and our body politics. The impossible, still-opening wounds of the US-Zionist genocide in Gaza, which have surpassed the long-upheld regime of

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My Uncle Who Died of AIDS Probably

July 31, 2026
by Tarik Dobbs

Your legs obliterated
& collapsing country

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cane dweller

July 31, 2026
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

here they are, young brown queer crippled and in love
holding hands in the co-op with an adaptive device like it’s nothing

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In Response to the Capsized Boat and 65 People Drowned off the...

July 31, 2026
by Leila Chatti

At a distance,
I assume others are kind, and this seems an essential
difference.

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Two Poems

July 31, 2026
by Rasha Abdulhadi

I read Palestine
when the news says Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq.
I step around the bodies

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Sharing My Days with Large Predators

July 31, 2026
by Joe Kadi

After dinner, when Baba goes to wash up, I tug on Mama’s sleeve. “When you go,” I say, “how will I know who I am?”

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A Poem and an Essay

July 31, 2026
by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán

In a time of hatreds. Record this memory of us (not) touching. Our lips (un)locked. Hands (un) twined. Letters braid with mine. Enbrine.

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The hero is dead, long live the mountain: Faris Dajani’s Threshold

July 23, 2026
by leena aboutaleb

BALTIMORE—Faris Dajani, a Palestinian-Jordanian multidisciplinary artist, stuns in his first solo exhibition, Threshold, Image. Situated in Gallery CA off East Oliver St. in Baltimore, Dajani cuts the thread of an imperial, detached reality at its metaphorical knees.

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Letter to a Disabled Brown Transsexual with Endometriosis

July 15, 2026
by Zeyn Joukhadar

After dinner, when Baba goes to wash up, I tug on Mama’s sleeve. “When you go,” I say, “how will I know who I am?”

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