Events

Milkweed Editions and Mizna are pleased to present a reading and conversation with award winning poet and translator, Fady Joudah, at the American Swedish Institute.

Note: This event is accessible and will include an ASL interpreter. Please reach out if you have any specific accessibility needs.

October 21, 2026 at 7pm
American Swedish Institute, 2600 Park Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55407

RSVP HERE

ABOUT THE BOOK

Fady Joudah writes from the split perspective of a Palestinian American physician caring for the sick while watching the destruction of Gaza from the United States, a nation complicit in that destruction. He locates the paradox of his position everywhere: in the seed a sparrow eats from his proffered hand; in his writing in English, the oppressor’s language; in the faces of Palestinian children receiving meals from aid kitchens—a glimpse into what his life could have been, and what is being lost in a war disproportionately impacting children and their families. Throughout the book, beauty insists on its survival not only through the Palestinian people, but also through the nonhuman world in which he takes occasional refuge from the devastation that humanity brings upon itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fady Joudah is the author of […], a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and Exhibit G. His other poetic works include: The Earth in the Attic; Alight; Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance; and Tethered to Stars. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition and has received the Jackson Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.