October 12, 2021

I Want Sky: Celebrating Sarah Hegazy

by Lana Barkawi | in Literary

A Digital and Print Collection

2022 Pride Reading in NYC

Seated is limited, RSVP today!

Watch I Want Sky Print Edition Launch

Recorded live on Sunday, November 7, 2021 at Open Book, Minneapolis.

Read I Want Sky Digital Edition
Order I Want Sky Print Edition

I Want Sky collects prose, poems, and hybrid work celebrating Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazy, and the lives of all LGBTQ+ Arabs and people of the SWANA region and its diaspora.

Published in a special partnership with The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the digital notebook was published in June 2021 on the one year anniversary of Sarah Hegazy’s death. The digital notebook was a special co-presented issue of AAWW’s online magazine The Margins. A special publication of the print version includes pieces exclusive to that format.

Contributions from AMA, Amir Ferdjani, Banah el Ghadbanah, donia salem harhoor, Eman Desouky, Gamal ElSawah, Ghinwa Jawhari, Janaine Mogannam, Kamelya Omayma Youssef, Layla Zbinden, ‘mad, Mejdulene B. Shomali, Mish Ismy, Nada Almosa, Niki Afsar, Nour Kamel, Nusaiba Imady, Qais Kamran, Shiyam Galyon, Walid Daou.

I Want Sky is guest-edited by Mariam Bazeed, with George Abraham serving as poetry editor. Illustrations are by Studio MNJNK, Haitham Haddad and printed issue design by Morcos Key, Wael Morcos and Rouba Yammine.

Join us in launching the print edition of I Want Sky.

In celebration of the launch, Wael Morcos who designed the print and digital versions of this collection will give a brief talk about the design process; AMA, Nusaiba Imady, and guest-editor Mariam Bazeed will give live readings of their work; + pre-recorded videos of I Want Sky authors reading their pieces will premier!

This event takes place IN PERSON on Sunday, November 7, 2021 at 6pm at Open Book, Minneapolis.

Those unable to attend in person can watch a livetream of the event on Mizna’s Facebook page.

RSVP REQUIRED

This publication is made possible by support to Mizna from the National Endowment for the Arts and the McKnight Foundation; and to AAWW from the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

ABOUT AAWW The Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to amplifying Asian American storytelling and literary culture. Since its founding in 1991, the AAWW has worked to cultivate a radically inclusive community of Asian and Asian diasporic writers and readers to mobilize for a more just future. AAWW’s award-winning digital magazine, The Margins, imagines a vibrant, nuanced, multiracial, and transnational Asian America through original fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, reportage, and interviews.

Mizna and AAWW also partnered in 2020 to present I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing: Poetry, Prose, and Protest, a reading of Mizna authors. That event was a part of National Poetry Coalition programming. It was also the very first virtual reading that we held in the early days of the pandemic. A video of that reading can be viewed here.