Events

Join us for Words for Palestine, an evening of prose, poetry and solidarity. The night will feature readings by Susan Muaddi Darraj, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby and Ghassan Zeineddine.

We encourage you to make a donation to support the work of Palestine Legal and PCRF – Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. @pal_legal is an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. @thepcrf is the primary humanitarian organization in Palestine, providing crucial and life-saving relief and humanitarian aid in Gaza.

6pmCT/7 pm ET, Wednesday, December 20, 2023

ONLINE VIA LIVESTREAM: Free with RSVP

This event is organized by the Arab American National Museum and cosponsored by Mizna and Palestine Writes. Find more events and resources for Gaza at our page, Toward a Free Palestine

About the Readers

Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is the author of the story collection Dearborn and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Ohio, where he is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College.

In addition to more than seventy-five poetry, short story, and essay publications, Laila Halaby is the author of a memoir The Weight of Ghosts, two novels, Once in a Promised Land and West of the Jordan (winner of a PEN Beyond Margins/Open Book award), and two collections of poetry. She holds two master’s degrees and was a Fulbright recipient. Laila lives in Tucson, Arizona, where for the last decade she has worked to merge her two career paths (counselor and writer) by working with community groups and organizations to create trauma-informed, expressive arts programming that serves veterans, refugees, homeless youth, as well as the general population.

Lisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian American writer and editor, is the author of Geographies of Light(Del Sol Press Poetry Prize, 2009), poems and essays in journals and anthologies across the US, Europe, the Middle East and India, a forthcoming poetry volume Broken, Unbroken, and two children’s books. A scholar of Arab American literature, she also co-edited three volumes of critical essays on Arab, Arab American, and international women writers, and is coediting a forthcoming volume, Companion to Arab American Literature. She has taught at various institutions and spoken at World Court of Women Against War (Bangalore), London Southbank’s Poetry International, Palestine Writes, Cyprus International Literary Festival, and other events in the US, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Germany, Tunisia, Bahrain, India. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Indonesian and Malayalam, and were displayed in the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America and the Middle East (Harn Museum of Art). A line of her poetry appears in a tattoo: Love is in the details.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, will be published in January 2024 by HarperVia.

For questions, contact Fatima Al-Rasool, fal-rasool@accesscommunity.org