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Join our monthly online series “Words for Palestine” which aims to center and highlight Palestinian voices during this devastating time. Featured readers include Zein El-Amine, Summer Farah, Zeina Hashem Beck and Kamelya Omayma Youssef. Poet Leena Aboutaleb will be moderating this July iteration.

Wednesday, July 10, 2024 at 7pm ET
Online via livestream
Free with RSVP

“Words For Palestine” is presented by the Arab American National Museum and co-sponsored by Mizna, Palestine Writes and RAWI, and is free with RSVP. We encourage you to make a donation to support the work of Palestine Legal and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). Palestine Legal is an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. PCRF is the primary humanitarian organization in Palestine, providing crucial and life-saving relief and humanitarian aid in Gaza.

For questions, e-mail Rewa Zeinati at rzeinati@accesscommunity.org

Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy in Focus, CityLit, Graylit, Split This Rock, Penumbra, DC Poets Against the War: An Anthology, Ghostfishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology and We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage. His latest poetry manuscript, A Travel Guide for the Exiled, was shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. El-Amine was awarded The Megaphone Prize by Radix Media for his collection of short stories titled Is This How You Eat A Watermelon? The book was nominated for the PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION. El-Amine’s short stories have appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and Bound Off. El-Amine lives in Washington, DC, teaching creative writing and global literature at Georgetown University.

Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer from California. The author of the chapbook I could die today and live again (Game Over Books, 2024), she organizes with the Radius of Arab American Writers and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day.

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her third poetry collection, O, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award for Poetry and was named a Best Book of the Year by Literary Huband The New York Public Library. Her previous full-length collections are Louder than Hearts, winner of the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, and To Live in Autumn, winner of the 2013 Backwaters Prize. She’s also the author of two chapbooks: 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook prize, and There Was and How Much There Was, a 2016 Laureate’s Choice selected by Carol Ann Duffy. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, LARB, Lithub, The Nation, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. She’s the co-editor, with Hala Alyan, of the anthology We Call to the Eye and the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent. She’s the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast in Arabic about Arabic poetry. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina has recently moved with her family to California.

Kamelya Omayma Youssef is a text, performance and education worker. She is the author of A book with a hole in it (Wendy’s Subway, 2022, received Carolyn Bush Award). Her poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming with 1080 Press, Gulf Coast, Sukoon, Poem-a-Day, Mizna, AAWW’s The Margins, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, The Poetry Project, Room Project, Cordite Poetry Review, among others. Her work has also been featured in the anthologies Beyond Memory(University of Arkansas Press) and Hatha Baladuna (Wayne State University Press). In 2021, she co-wrote and acted in Kilo Batra: In Death More Radiant, a speculative metatranslation set in three time periods with Mariam Bazeed and A Host of People. She also hosts workshops and open mics and performances with her friends. Hailing from Lebanon, she is based between New York and Dearborn/Detroit, and floats between there and elsewhere. She and you will see a free Palestine in this lifetime.

For questions, e-mail Rewa Zeinati at rzeinati@accesscommunity.org