Events

As the devastating genocide in Sudan approaches a three-year mark, Mizna presents a Baltimore reading and fundraiser. This evening benefits Sunduq al-Sudan and features Suad Abdel aziz of Decolonize Sudan as well as readings from Sara Elkamel, Ruba Elmelik, Umniya Najaer, Ladan Osman, and Mohammed Zenia. This is a free, public event held on the eve of the 2026 AWP conference.

Join us on Wednesday, March 4, 2025, at 6pm (Doors 5:30pm) at Red Emma’s, 3128 Greenmount Ave, Baltimore, MD 21218.

TICKETS

Iftar snacks provided and meals available for purchase. The venue Red Emma’s is a worker cooperative, owned and democratically managed by its workers, and its food is 100% plant based.

This event is made possible with the support of Critical Minded.

About Sunduq al-Sudan 

Sunduq Al Sudan is an umbrella initiative to support mutual aid groups carrying out critical humanitarian work in response to the crisis in Sudan. Donate now

ABOUT THE READERS

Suad Abdel aziz is a Sudanese American human rights lawyer and founding executive director of Decolonize Sudan. She was born and raised in Hasahisa, Sudan. At Decolonize Sudan, she documents and challenges abuses within reports and articles, creates educational materials and leads advocacy trainings throughout the US.

Sara Elkamel holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021) and Garden City (Beloit Poetry Journal, 2026). Her translations include Mona Kareem’s chapbook, I Will Not Fold These Maps (Poetry Translation Centre, 2023) and Dalia Taha’s Enter World (Graywolf Press, 2026). She lives in Cairo.

Ruba El Melik is a writer from Sudan. Her writing is published in Africa Is Now, Acacia Magazine, Mizna, SAND Journal, and LOLWE. She is the coauthor of (Un)Doing Resistance: Authoritarianism and Attacks on the Arts in Sudan’s 30 Years of Islamist Rule (Andariya, 2022).

Umniya Najaer, Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary poet, essayist, and Black studies scholar of Sudanese origin. She is serving as the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder for the 2025–26 academic year. Umniya’s writing is invested in activating the human ability to feel what each other feels. Her work is guided by a profound reverence for our planetary home, a duty to protect all lifeforms, and a commitment to oppose all systems of dehumanization, brutality, and deathmaking.

Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Whiting Award, and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony, winner of the Sillerman Prize. She lives in New York.

Mohammed Zenia Siddig Yusef Ibrahim is the author of five books of poetry including BLK WTTGNSN and Black Bedouin, cowritten with Tenaya Nasser, as well as the forthcoming collection BLK MSM. Of Sudanese descent they were born in Sofia, Bulgaria and currently reside in Brooklyn.